PayPal vs Stripe

PayPal

The business pages speak of one platform combining PayPal business solutions and the fee page references credit and debit card payments plus PayPal Plus, but we found no public information on a named method list per market — no SEPA Direct Debit, no iDEAL, Bancontact or Klarna, and the only country/currency statement is a fee rule that EWR transactions in EUR and SEK count as domestic.

Stripe

SEPA Direct Debit at 0,35 € and Klarna at ab 2,99 % + 0,35 € are named and priced, Girocard is supported on the S700 reader, and the headline claims "Über 100 Zahlungsmethoden" across 135+ currencies. But the pages never say which countries each method serves, and we found no public information on wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay, on iDEAL, Bancontact, BLIK, TWINT or EPS, or on refund and recurring support per method — so a merchant cannot plan per market from this.

PayPal

We found no public information on hosted or embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure, SCA exemption handling, fraud screening or declined-payment handling — nothing captured addresses the path from basket to authorised payment.

Stripe

Stripe Radar is named as the fraud product that shares attempted transactions for risk assessment and "PCI-Konformität" is claimed, but we found no public information on checkout integration types, 3-D Secure, SCA exemption handling, soft-decline handling or authorisation-rate reporting. For a European basket under PSD2, which is where my conversions live, this is the part the pages say nothing about.

PayPal

This is the make-or-break criterion for a subscription business, and we found no public information on stored payment methods, merchant-initiated transactions, SEPA mandate handling, subscription plans, dunning or a process for exporting payment tokens to another provider.

Stripe

Stripe Billing is evidenced at scale — "200 Mio.+ aktive Abos, die über Stripe Billing verwaltet werden" — with usage-based and invoice-based models priced and SEPA Direct Debit at 0,35 €. But we found no public information on dunning, smart retries, card account updater, mandate pre-notification, merchant-initiated transaction handling, or a process for exporting payment tokens to another provider, and the terms grant only a revocable technology licence with no data-retention obligation after the contract ends — the hostage problem I care most about is not addressed anywhere I can see.

PayPal

We found no public information on payout cadence or settlement currencies, per-transaction fee breakdowns, reconciliation reports, or a documented API with webhooks; the only adjacent fact is that Interchange Plus and Blended pricing models exist, with details referred to the online payments terms.

Stripe

The developer side is genuinely evidenced — SDKs, APIs, developer documentation, the app marketplace, 500 Mio.+ API requests daily — but we found no public information on payout frequency or settlement currencies, per-transaction fee itemisation, reconciliation reports that match bank lines, webhooks, or a status page with incident history. My finance team cannot close a month from what these pages show.

PayPal

The imprint names the regulated entity in full — a Luxembourg bank supervised by the CSSF with register number B 118 349, its general partner registered and management listed — which goes beyond a bare licence mention. But we found no public information on chargeback fees, a dispute process, safeguarding of merchant funds, or termination notice periods.

Stripe

The imprint names Stripe, Inc. of South San Francisco, California with a Delaware register number, the pricing page lists 20,00 € per payment dispute, and the terms give me 30 days notice of fee increases — but we found no public information on a European regulated entity with its supervisor, licence type, register number or a safeguarding statement. And the terms say Stripe "may terminate this Agreement or close User's Stripe Account at any time", with no stated notice period, reason, reserve limits, release timeline or appeal route.

PayPal

EU merchants contract with a Luxembourg bank supervised by the CSSF, which is the solid part. Ownership traces to PayPal Holdings in San Jose, and we found no public information on where payment and cardholder data are processed, on named processing infrastructure, or on any subprocessor list.

Stripe

The service provider named in the legal notice is Stripe, Inc., South San Francisco, California, and we found no public information on where payment and cardholder data is processed or stored, or on any subprocessor with its location. The privacy policy references international data transfers without naming safeguards or processing locations, so there is nothing here a European buyer can rely on for EU processing.

PayPal

A public fee page exists and says plainly that Interchange Plus, Blended and Interchange Plus Plus models are available, with EWR transactions in EUR and SEK treated as domestic for fees — but we found no public information on actual transaction rates, currency conversion markups, chargeback or payout fees, and micropayment and nonprofit rates both require application and preapproval. The one published percentage captured, 1.29% for international transactions to UK-recipient merchants, applies only under separate agreements, so the effective fee is not computable.

Stripe

Card pricing is unusually precise — 1,5 % + 0,25 € for standard EWR cards, 2,8 % + 0,25 € premium, 2,5 % + 0,25 € UK, 3,15 % + 0,25 € foreign — with a 2 % currency-conversion markup, 20,00 € dispute fee, SEPA at 0,35 €, "IC+-Preisgestaltung" named for custom tiers, and no setup, monthly or hidden fees. We found no public information on refund or payout fees, and the methods behind the "Über 100 Zahlungsmethoden" headline are unpriced on the captured pages, so the effective fee is close to computable but not fully.