PayPal vs Stripe

PayPal

The captured pages reference card payments and PayPal Plus but name no local methods, no SEPA Direct Debit, and no per-country or per-currency coverage for any method. The only currency statement is a fee rule treating EUR and SEK transactions inside the EEA as domestic, which tells me about fees, not about what a customer in each market can actually pay with.

Stripe

The pricing page names SEPA-Lastschrift at 0,35 €, Klarna from 2,99 % + 0,35 €, Girocard on the German terminal reader, and card rates split into EWR standard, EWR premium, UK and foreign cards — real local methods with real prices. But "Über 100 Zahlungsmethoden" is a count, not a coverage statement: we found no public information on which methods serve which countries, and no named wallets or method-level refund and recurring support.

PayPal

We found no public information on checkout integration options, 3-D Secure or SCA exemption handling, declined-payment handling, or fraud screening in the captured pages. Nothing to score against beyond absence.

Stripe

Stripe Radar is named as the fraud product and PCI-Konformität is claimed, with no-code payment links and SDKs as integration paths, but that is all the captured pages show. We found no public information on 3-D Secure, SCA exemption handling, liability shift, or declined-payment handling — the PSD2 authorisation path is undocumented here.

PayPal

We found no public information on stored payment methods, SEPA mandate handling, merchant-initiated transactions, subscription logic, dunning, or any process for exporting payment tokens in the captured pages. For a business whose revenue is repeat revenue, that silence is disqualifying as currently evidenced.

Stripe

Subscriptions are clearly a first-class product — 200 Mio.+ aktive Abos managed through Stripe Billing, with usage-based and invoice-based billing priced publicly and SEPA-Lastschrift at 0,35 € alongside stored payment information via Link. But the operational mechanics are silent: we found no public information on merchant-initiated transactions, dunning or smart retries, card account updater, mandate pre-notification, or any process for exporting payment tokens.

PayPal

We found no public information on payout schedule or currencies, per-transaction fee breakdowns, reports that reconcile to bank lines, or any API and webhooks. The one adjacent fact is that Interchange Plus pricing structures are said to be available, which gestures at itemised fees but evidences nothing about the payout or reporting a finance team actually receives.

Stripe

For a platform claiming 500 Mio.+ API-Anfragen täglich with SDKs and a dashboard, the captured pages give a finance team nothing to close the month on: no payout schedule or settlement currencies, no per-transaction fee breakdown, no reconciliation reports, and no webhooks or test mode. The terms also state Stripe is not obligated to retain data after the term, so historical continuity is not promised.

PayPal

The legal notice publishes the regulated entity, its CSSF banking licence covering the EU, the commercial register number B 118 349, the general partner register and management names — identity disclosure I rarely see done this completely. But we found no public information on reserve or rolling-hold conditions and their limits, chargeback fees, dispute process, or termination notice periods in the captured pages, so the bad-day terms remain unwritten where I can read them.

Stripe

The terms let Stripe terminate or close the account "at any time" with no reason or timeline stated, and we found no public information on any regulated payments entity, licence, safeguarding of merchant funds, or reserve and hold conditions — my rolling-reserve question is simply unanswered. The published 20,00 € dispute fee and 30 days' notice on fee increases are the only merchant-facing protections evidenced; the imprint names Stripe, Inc. of Delaware.

PayPal

The contracting entity is the Luxembourg bank under CSSF supervision with a published register number, which is the part the vendor controls at the contracting layer. But we found no public information on where payment and cardholder data is processed or on any subprocessor list, and the parent is recorded as PayPal Holdings, Inc. of San Jose.

Stripe

The imprint names Stripe, Inc. of Delaware at a South San Francisco address as the service provider, and the vendor's captured pages confirm no EU contracting or licensed entity. The privacy policy carries an international data transfer section and the agreement incorporates a Data Transfers Addendum, and we found no public information on where payment or cardholder data is processed or which subprocessors are used.

PayPal

The fees page names its pricing models — Interchange Plus, Blended, Interchange Plus Plus — states that EUR and SEK transactions within the EEA are treated as domestic for fee purposes, and lists a 1.29% surcharge for UK recipients that only applies to merchants with separate agreements. But we found no base rate published for any method, and micropayment and nonprofit rates exist only on application and approval, so I cannot compute an effective fee for any mix of cards and countries from these pages.

Stripe

A genuinely detailed public price list: 1,5 % + 0,25 € for EWR standard cards, 2,8 % + 0,25 € premium, 3,15 % + 0,25 € foreign cards, 2,5 % + 0,25 € UK plus 2 % currency conversion, SEPA at 0,35 €, Klarna from 2,99 % + 0,35 €, disputes at 20,00 €, no monthly or setup fees, and IC+ pricing named with volume discounts for larger merchants. Two common costs are missing from the captured pages — payout fees and refund handling — and with over 100 payment methods claimed but only a handful priced, the effective fee for a mixed-method business is not fully computable.