PayPal vs Stripe

PayPal

We found no public information naming which payment methods are available per country or currency — no cards, SEPA Direct Debit, iDEAL, Bancontact or any other local method appears in the captures. "PayPal Open combines all business solutions" is a platform slogan, not a list I can plan eight EU markets against.

Stripe

The pages give me a count — "über 100 Zahlungsmethoden" — and pricing names SEPA Direct Debit (0,35 €), Klarna (ab 2,99 % + 0,35 €) and Girocard on the German reader, which is more than a vague "many local methods". But no wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay are named, there is no per-country list of methods, and we found no public information on which methods support refunds or recurring charges — I cannot plan a launch in my eight markets on a count.

PayPal

We found no public information on hosted or embedded checkout, 3-D Secure handling, SCA exemptions or fraud screening in these captures. For a shop measured on conversion, I cannot judge whether a challenge fires only when it must.

Stripe

Fraud prevention is evidenced — Stripe Radar and the platform compliance modules are named, and PCI compliance is stated — but we found no public information on hosted versus embedded checkout, on 3-D Secure or SCA exemption handling, or on declined-payment handling. For a merchant measured on conversion, nothing on these pages shows the challenge flow at all, let alone one that challenges only when it must.

PayPal

We found no public information on stored cards or SEPA mandates, subscription plans, smart retries or dunning. Recurring support is entirely unevidenced.

Stripe

Stripe Billing is clearly a serious product — 200 million-plus active subscriptions, usage-based and invoice-based billing priced (0,7 % of billing volume, 0,4 % per paid invoice) and Link storing payment details for repeat purchases. But we found no public information on SEPA mandate management, merchant-initiated transactions, retries and dunning, an account updater, or exporting tokens to another provider.

PayPal

We found no public information on payout frequency or settlement currencies, per-transaction fee breakdowns, reconciliation reports, or an API with webhooks. A finance team cannot plan a month-end close from what is published here.

Stripe

The developer side is evidently substantial — 500 million-plus API requests daily, SDKs, developer documentation and an app marketplace — and payouts are named as a capability, but we found no public information on payout cadence or settlement currencies. Nothing on fee itemisation per transaction, reports that match bank lines, webhooks or a test mode, so my finance team gets scale numbers and no reconciliation story.

PayPal

The imprint names the regulated entity in full — a Luxembourg bank supervised by the CSSF, register number B 118 349, treated as a bank EU-wide — which is solid identification. We found no public information on safeguarding of merchant funds, reserve or freeze conditions, termination notice, chargeback fees or a dispute route, so the bad-day terms are unevidenced.

Stripe

The imprint names Stripe, Inc. of Delaware with a register number, and the terms publish a 20,00 € dispute fee and at least 30 days notice of fee increases. But the terms state Stripe may terminate the agreement or close the account at any time, and we found no public information on a financial licence or supervisor, safeguarding of merchant funds, reserves or holds, or a dispute process.

PayPal

EU merchants contract with the Luxembourg bank entity supervised by the CSSF, but the captures state nothing on where payment and cardholder data are processed or stored, and no subprocessor list is published. With the group parent in San Jose per provenance and ownership unconfirmed on the vendor's own pages, only the contracting layer is evidenced as European.

Stripe

The captured pages name a California service provider and a Delaware corporation as the legal entity, and we found no public information on where payment or cardholder data is processed, on a published subprocessor list with locations, or on European ownership — the independent sovereignty pipeline likewise scores this at zero. A data-transfers section and an incorporated DPA exist in the terms, but nothing captured states EU processing; the provenance notes an Irish contracting entity for EEA merchants, which the vendor's own captured pages do not state.

PayPal

The pricing page names its pricing models — interchange plus, blended and interchange plus plus — and states that EWR transactions in euro or Swedish krona count as domestic, plus a 1.29% UK recipient surcharge under separate agreements. But we found no public rate for any method or card mix, and micropayment and nonprofit pricing require application and approval, so I cannot compute an effective fee.

Stripe

This is the strongest part: standard and premium EWR cards (1,5 % + 0,25 € and 2,8 % + 0,25 €), UK and foreign cards, a 2 % currency conversion markup, 20,00 € disputes, 0,35 € SEPA Direct Debit and Klarna ab 2,99 % + 0,35 € are all public, with interchange-plus named for custom tiers and no setup or monthly fees stated for the standard plan. But most of the "100+" methods carry no published price, and we found no public information on refund or payout fees or on published volume tiers, so my effective rate is computable for cards only.