PayPal vs Stripe

PayPal

We found no public information on which payment methods a European customer can actually pay with — no card scheme, wallet, SEPA Direct Debit or local method is named in the captured pages, and nothing on country or currency coverage per method. "PayPal Open combines all business solutions on one platform" is a scope statement, not a method list a merchant can plan against.

Stripe

The captured pages price SEPA Direct Debit at 0,35 €, Klarna from 2,99 % + 0,35 € and cards by origin, and Girocard is named on the terminal reader — but the only statement of breadth is the count 'Über 100 Zahlungsmethoden', and we found no public information on iDEAL, Bancontact, BLIK, TWINT or Wero coverage, on the countries each method serves, or on which methods support refunds and recurring charges.

PayPal

We found no public information on hosted or embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure, SCA exemptions, fraud screening or PCI DSS scope. The single captured product statement — combining business solutions on one platform — says nothing about the path from basket to authorised payment.

Stripe

Stripe Radar is named as the fraud product and PCI conformity is claimed, but we found no public information on 3-D Secure, SCA exemptions, hosted versus embedded checkout options, PCI scope per integration, or liability shift. A fraud product's name and a compliance badge are not a documented authorisation path.

PayPal

We found no public information on stored cards, merchant-initiated transactions, SEPA mandates, subscription logic, smart retries or dunning. Nor is there any documented way to export stored credentials to another provider — token portability is the clause I read for first, and the captured pages say nothing about it.

Stripe

A subscription product is evidenced — '200 Mio.+ aktive Abos, die über Stripe Billing verwaltet werden', configurable billing models and usage-based pricing at 'Token 0,01 € pro 1.000 Einheiten'. But we found no public information on SEPA mandate management, dunning or smart retries, card account updater, or a documented process for exporting payment tokens to another provider.

PayPal

We found no public information on payout cadence or settlement currencies, per-transaction fee breakdown, reconciliation reporting, or the API, webhooks and test mode. Nothing in the captured pages links a payout to its transactions, so month-end close is unverifiable from public evidence.

Stripe

SDKs, APIs, an app marketplace and developer documentation are evidenced with stated throughput, but we found no public information on payout schedule or delay, settlement currencies, per-transaction fee breakdowns in reports, webhooks, or reconciliation exports that match bank lines. The 99,999 % historical availability figure is an uptime claim, not an incident-history status page.

PayPal

The imprint publishes exactly what I look for: the regulated entity PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., its supervisor CSSF, its licence as an EU-wide bank, and two Luxembourg register numbers with named management. The risk side stays dark — we found no public information on reserves, fund freezes, termination notice, chargeback fees or a dispute process in the captured pages.

Stripe

The only entity the captured pages name is Stripe, Inc., a Delaware corporation with a corporate register number — we found no public information on a payment licence, supervisor, safeguarding of merchant funds, or reserve and hold conditions. The terms state Stripe 'may terminate this Agreement or close User's Stripe Account at any time', route disputes to individual binding arbitration in English with liability capped at the prior twelve months' fees, and the one protective number published is the '20,00 € für jede Zahlungsanfechtung' dispute fee.

PayPal

The contracting entity is named and registered in Luxembourg as a CSSF-supervised bank, so the EU part of the chain is documented. Beyond that we found no public information on where payment or cardholder data is processed, on a subprocessor list, or on any safeguard covering the US-based group parent.

Stripe

The contracting entity named on the captured pages is Stripe, Inc. of Delaware with its service address in South San Francisco, and we found no public information on where payment or cardholder data is processed, on processing locations for any subprocessor, or on an EU licence for the European contracting chain. The privacy policy confirms international data transfers and machine-learning training on the data, and a data transfers addendum is incorporated without a stated location safeguard.

PayPal

A pricing page exists, naming Interchange Plus, Blended and Interchange Plus Plus fee structures, the rule that EWR transactions in EUR or SEK are treated as domestic, and a 1.29% surcharge for UK-based recipients that applies only under separate agreements. But we found no published transaction rate in the captured facts, no currency conversion markup, no chargeback, refund or payout fee — and micropayments and nonprofit rates require application and preapproval, so the effective fee cannot be computed from public pages alone.

Stripe

This is the rare pricing page that shows its markups: '1,5 % + 0,25 €' for standard EWR cards against '2,8 % + 0,25 €' for premium EWR and '3,15 % + 0,25 €' for foreign cards, plus a stated 2 % currency conversion, a '20,00 €' chargeback fee, no monthly fee for standard payments, and interchange-plus named as an available model. We found no public information on refund or payout fees, and volume tiers and country-specific pricing sit in a custom tier rather than as published numbers.