Stripe is extraordinary engineering applied to a problem that most businesses encounter badly. Its API documentation is among the best in software, its developer experience set a standard for the industry when it launched in 2010, and its feature depth — from subscriptions to marketplace payments to fraud detection — is genuinely difficult to match. Billions of dollars flow through Stripe daily, and the company's growth from a two-line JavaScript snippet to a full financial infrastructure stack is one of the defining business stories of the past decade.
The question is not whether Stripe is good. It clearly is. The question is whether it is the right tool for your specific context.
Stripe's flat 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction fee is competitive in the United States but expensive in markets where local processors charge less. Its merchant-of-record status does not extend to handling VAT and sales tax for software businesses, which means international SaaS companies need to layer on additional compliance tooling. The developer-centric onboarding, which is a feature for engineers, can be a barrier for non-technical business owners who want a payment system without writing code. And Stripe's account termination and fund holding policies, while consistent with the broader payment processing industry, have generated enough documented complaints that risk-sensitive merchants are right to consider alternatives.
According to McKinsey's 2023 Global Payments Report, digital payment revenues reached approximately $2.2 trillion globally in 2022 and are projected to grow to $3 trillion by 2026. The market is large enough to support multiple strong competitors, and the alternatives have grown significantly more capable in the past five years.
"The best payment processor is the one your customer trusts enough to complete the transaction. Technology comes second. Perceived legitimacy comes first." — Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, First Round Capital interview, 2013
Key Definitions
Payment Processor: A company that handles the technical and financial plumbing of a transaction, communicating between the merchant's bank, the customer's bank, and the card networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc.).
Merchant of Record (MoR): The legal entity responsible for the sale transaction, including tax collection and remittance. An MoR arrangement offloads tax compliance from the software seller to the platform.
Interchange Fee: The fee paid to the card-issuing bank for each transaction. Most processors bundle this into a flat rate. Interchange-plus pricing passes the actual interchange cost through with a fixed margin, which is cheaper for high-volume merchants.
Chargeback: A transaction reversal initiated by a customer through their bank. High chargeback rates can result in processor penalties or account termination.
PCI Compliance: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for any entity that stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data. Most hosted payment processors handle PCI compliance on behalf of merchants.
Dynamic fraud scoring: Machine learning-based transaction evaluation that assigns a risk score in real time, blocking suspicious transactions while minimizing friction for legitimate customers.
Strong Customer Authentication (SCA): A European regulatory requirement under PSD2 that mandates multi-factor authentication for electronic payments. All processors serving European markets must comply with SCA; quality of implementation varies.
Payment Processors Compared
| Processor | Best For | Transaction Fee | Monthly Fee | MoR | Global Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal | Consumer trust, Buy Now Pay Later | 2.99% + $0.49 | None | No | 200 markets |
| Square | In-person + hybrid retail | 2.6% + $0.10 (in-person) | None | No | US, UK, AU, CA, JP |
| Braintree | PayPal + cards, developer API | 2.59% + $0.49 | None | No | 45+ countries |
| Adyen | Enterprise, global acquiring | Interchange-plus | ~$120 minimum | No | 35+ currencies |
| Paddle | SaaS/software global sales | 5% + $0.50 | None | Yes | 200+ jurisdictions |
| LemonSqueezy | Indie SaaS, simple MoR | 5% + $0.50 | None | Yes | Global |
| Chargebee | Complex subscription billing | % of revenue | $0 to $599/mo | No | Integrates with others |
| Recurly | Mid-market subscriptions | 0.9% of revenue | $249/mo | No | Integrates with others |
| Mollie | European businesses, local methods | 1.8% + $0.25 (EU) | None | No | Europe primary |
| 2Checkout/Verifone | Legacy global commerce | 3.5%-6% + $0.35-0.60 | None | Yes (MoR tier) | 200+ countries |
Understanding Stripe's Position Before Evaluating Alternatives
Stripe processes hundreds of billions of dollars per year across millions of businesses. Its competitive advantages are cumulative: years of fraud data informing its Radar machine learning fraud detection, a developer community that has built extensive tutorials, plugins, and integrations on top of Stripe's API, and a product surface area that covers virtually every payment scenario a growing startup will encounter.
Stripe's weaknesses are also well-documented:
Account risk: Stripe operates as a payment facilitator rather than a traditional merchant account provider, which means merchants share a combined merchant account. Stripe manages risk across this pool and will freeze or terminate accounts that it determines pose elevated risk — sometimes with limited advance notice. Industries including firearms, CBD, adult content, and high-chargeback categories face elevated risk of account action. Affected merchants have documented cases where Stripe held funds for 90-180 days during review.
International fee structure: Stripe's standard 2.9% + $0.30 applies to domestic US transactions. International cards add 1.5%. Currency conversion adds another 1% in most cases. European merchants processing primarily in euros face a fee structure that local alternatives typically undercut.
Tax compliance gap: Stripe Billing manages subscription billing logic, but Stripe does not collect or remit sales tax, VAT, or GST on behalf of merchants selling digital products or software internationally. This is a significant operational burden for small software businesses selling globally, which has driven many to Paddle or LemonSqueezy despite their higher transaction fees.
Understanding these gaps clearly makes the case for specific alternatives far more compelling than a generic "here are some options" framing.
PayPal: The Consumer Trust Leader
PayPal was founded in 1998 and went public in 2002, making it the oldest major player in this comparison by a significant margin. Over 400 million active accounts globally give PayPal a consumer trust advantage that no newer processor has replicated. In many markets, particularly in the United States and Germany, a significant portion of consumers will abandon checkout if PayPal is not an option.
A Baymard Institute checkout conversion study found that 54% of US online shoppers have abandoned a purchase because the checkout process required creating an account. PayPal's stored credentials system addresses this directly — the customer clicks Pay with PayPal, authenticates with their existing PayPal account, and completes the transaction without entering card details. For merchants where checkout abandonment is measurable, PayPal as a checkout option consistently reduces this friction.
What PayPal Does Well
PayPal Checkout's Buy Now Pay Later options (Pay Later in the US, Pay in 4 in other markets) have shown measurable conversion improvements in A/B tests run by large merchants. By offering installment options without requiring the merchant to manage credit risk, PayPal's BNPL features can increase average order values, particularly for purchases in the $100-$500 range where customers are price-sensitive but not unable to afford the purchase.
PayPal's global reach covers 200 markets and 100 currencies. The Braintree acquisition (2013) gave PayPal a developer-grade API that is substantially better than PayPal's original integration options. For businesses where consumer trust and recognition drive conversion, PayPal as a supplementary checkout option consistently lifts purchase completion rates.
PayPal's Seller Protection program covers merchants against unauthorized transaction claims and "item not received" disputes in eligible transactions, which is more comprehensive than Stripe's standard dispute protections.
Where PayPal Falls Short
PayPal's infamous account freeze policy has generated extensive documentation of merchants having funds held for 180 days without explanation. The PayPal community forums and platforms like Trust Pilot contain thousands of merchant complaints about unexplained fund holds. PayPal's response to these cases is typically formulaic, citing risk review processes without merchant-specific explanation.
The developer experience for non-Braintree integrations remains poor. The legacy PayPal API is inconsistently documented, has multiple overlapping integration paths that reflect decades of product evolution, and is generally more difficult to work with than Stripe's. Fees for international transactions are higher than Stripe's. PayPal is best used as a supplementary checkout option rather than a primary processor.
Pricing
2.99% plus $0.49 for standard transactions. 3.49% plus $0.49 for digital goods. International transactions add 1.5%.
Square: Best for In-Person and Hybrid Commerce
Square was founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. Its original insight was that card acceptance should be as accessible to a street vendor as to a retail chain, achieved through a free card reader that plugged into a smartphone headphone jack. Square has since expanded into online payments, invoicing, payroll, and point-of-sale systems.
Square's parent company Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) reported processing over $200 billion in annualized GPV (gross payment volume) in 2023, making it one of the largest payment processors globally by volume in the SMB segment.
What Square Does Well
Square's in-person payment hardware ecosystem is the most polished in the market for small to mid-size retailers. The Square Point of Sale app is free, the Terminal hardware is well-designed, and the inventory management and reporting built into the free tier is genuinely useful. For businesses that sell both online and in person, Square's unified inventory across channels reduces administrative complexity — a sale in-store immediately reduces online inventory counts, which prevents overselling.
Square's free tier is notably generous. The free POS software, the free online store builder, the free invoicing tool, and the free booking software all reduce total software costs for small businesses, offsetting the slightly higher transaction fee compared to Stripe's rate.
The Square Ecosystem also includes Square Payroll, Square Marketing, Square Loyalty, and Square Appointments — creating a unified SMB platform that reduces the number of separate software tools a retail business needs to operate.
Where Square Falls Short
Square is primarily a US-focused product with meaningful operations in Canada, Australia, UK, and Japan but limited global coverage compared to Stripe or Adyen. Its API is less comprehensive than Stripe's. High-risk merchant categories face account termination risk similar to Stripe.
Square's online checkout is less customizable than Stripe's. Merchants with complex checkout flows — multi-step forms, advanced upsell logic, subscription billing with complex trial and upgrade paths — will hit Square's limits faster than Stripe's.
Pricing
2.6% plus $0.10 for in-person transactions. 2.9% plus $0.30 for online transactions. No monthly fee for the standard plan.
Braintree: PayPal's Developer Platform
Braintree is PayPal's developer-first payment platform, acquired in 2013 for $800 million. It offers a REST API, client-side SDKs, and native PayPal integration in a package that competes more directly with Stripe than the consumer PayPal product does. Venmo payments are available through Braintree for US merchants.
What Braintree Does Well
Braintree's drop-in UI component handles card number tokenization, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay in a single integration. The developer experience is substantially better than the standard PayPal API. For merchants who need PayPal as a payment option alongside cards, Braintree packages both cleanly in a well-documented SDK.
Braintree's Data Vault handles PCI-compliant storage of payment methods, allowing merchants to implement subscription billing, one-click checkout, and payment method management without touching raw card data.
For high-volume merchants, Braintree offers interchange-plus pricing by negotiation — meaning the effective transaction cost scales with volume rather than staying fixed at the standard rate. This makes Braintree more competitive for businesses processing millions of dollars monthly than the headline rate suggests.
Where Braintree Falls Short
Braintree's pricing on standard transactions matches Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30 (more precisely 2.59% + $0.49), offering no fee advantage for typical volumes. The platform has received less product investment than it did before the PayPal integration matured. Some features that Stripe has built natively — advanced subscription billing, instant payouts, radar fraud rules — require more implementation work in Braintree.
Pricing
2.59% plus $0.49 for most transactions. Interchange-plus pricing available for enterprise merchants.
Adyen: Enterprise-Grade Global Payments
Adyen was founded in Amsterdam in 2006 and went public on Euronext Amsterdam in 2018 at a valuation of approximately €7 billion. It processes payments for Spotify, Netflix, Microsoft, eBay, and Uber, among many others. Adyen's defining characteristic is that it acts as both the payment processor and the acquiring bank for most transactions, giving it more control over fees and fraud rules than platforms that rely on third-party acquirers.
Adyen's 2023 annual report disclosed approximately €970 billion in total processed volume, giving it comparable scale to Stripe with a different market focus — Adyen targets enterprise and large mid-market merchants rather than startups and SMBs.
What Adyen Does Well
Adyen's fraud tooling, called RevenueProtect, is machine learning-based and informed by transaction data from its entire merchant network. When Adyen sees a card being used fraudulently across multiple merchants, it can apply that intelligence to block suspicious transactions at all merchants simultaneously — a network effect in fraud detection that smaller processors cannot replicate.
Its global acquiring capabilities cover 35 currencies with local acquiring in most major markets, which typically produces higher authorization rates than cross-border processing. When a UK customer pays on a UK merchant's site, local acquiring means the transaction is processed by a UK bank rather than being routed internationally — banks are more likely to authorize familiar-looking domestic transactions, which improves approval rates by 2-4% on average compared to cross-border processing.
The unified commerce offering covers online, in-store, and in-app payments on a single platform with unified reporting. For large retailers with complex omnichannel operations, the ability to reconcile payment data across channels in a single dashboard has significant operational value.
Where Adyen Falls Short
Adyen requires a minimum monthly invoice of approximately $120 and is oriented toward merchants processing significant volume. The onboarding process is more involved than Stripe's, and the documentation presupposes familiarity with payment industry concepts. Adyen is not a good fit for startups or low-volume merchants — both the pricing floor and the integration complexity are misaligned with that segment.
Pricing
Interchange-plus pricing. Processing fee varies by payment method and region; typically 0.3% to 0.8% above interchange for cards.
Paddle: Merchant of Record for Software
Paddle was founded in London in 2012 and has established itself as the leading merchant-of-record platform for software companies and SaaS businesses. When a company sells through Paddle, Paddle is the legal seller of record — customers see "Sold by Paddle" on their receipts. Paddle collects and remits VAT, US sales tax, and other consumption taxes in over 200 jurisdictions.
Paddle's acquisition of ProfitWell in 2022 gave it a significant product analytics and churn management capability, making it more than just a payment processor — it is now positioning itself as a revenue infrastructure platform for software companies.
What Paddle Does Well
For a SaaS company selling to customers in 30 countries, the alternative to Paddle is hiring a tax attorney in each jurisdiction, registering for VAT in the EU, and managing quarterly filings. Paddle eliminates that complexity entirely. Its subscription management features cover trials, upgrades, downgrades, pause, and cancellation flows. The checkout is well-designed and converts well for B2B software purchases.
Paddle's compliance coverage extends to GDPR (as a data processor under EU law), Australian GST, Canadian GST/HST, and numerous other territorial tax requirements that software businesses selling globally must navigate. The effective labor cost of managing this compliance in-house for a small software business typically exceeds Paddle's fee premium over Stripe.
The ProfitWell Metrics integration (now included with Paddle) provides MRR, ARR, churn, LTV, and cohort analysis dashboards that would otherwise require a separate analytics tool.
Where Paddle Falls Short
Paddle's effective fee (5% plus $0.50 per transaction) is higher than Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30. The premium reflects the compliance burden Paddle absorbs, but it is a meaningful margin compression for high-volume software businesses. At $100,000 MRR, Paddle costs approximately $5,550 per month in fees versus Stripe's roughly $3,230 per month — a difference of $2,320/month that needs to be weighed against the compliance cost savings.
Paddle's checkout is less customizable than Stripe's. Merchants who want fully branded, pixel-perfect checkout experiences will find Stripe's flexibility superior.
Pricing
5% plus $0.50 per transaction. No monthly fee.
LemonSqueezy: Modern MoR for Indie Developers
LemonSqueezy was founded in 2021 and acquired by Stripe in 2024, a development that will shape its future direction. Before the acquisition, it positioned itself as the indie-developer-friendly version of Paddle. The onboarding was faster, the dashboard was cleaner, and the pricing was competitive. It became particularly popular in the bootstrapped SaaS and indie hacker community.
LemonSqueezy's product stood out for its speed of onboarding — a developer could go from sign-up to accepting payments in under an hour without a lengthy compliance review. Paddle's onboarding, while improving, historically took days to weeks for new accounts to be activated.
Post-acquisition integration timelines are unclear as of 2025. Stripe has indicated it will maintain LemonSqueezy as a product, but its roadmap and strategic positioning relative to Stripe's own products remain uncertain. Merchants should monitor Stripe's announcements regarding LemonSqueezy's future roadmap before building new products on the platform — not because it is likely to disappear, but because its differentiation from Stripe itself is likely to shift.
Pricing
5% plus $0.50 per transaction. No monthly fee.
Chargebee: Subscription Revenue Management
Chargebee is not a payment processor in the traditional sense. It is a subscription management and revenue operations platform that sits on top of payment gateways including Stripe, Braintree, and Adyen. Chargebee handles billing logic, dunning management, metered billing, coupon management, and revenue recognition that payment processors do not natively provide.
Chargebee's customers include Freshworks, Okta, and Calendly — companies with subscription billing complexity that exceeds what Stripe Billing's native features support. Chargebee's flexibility in handling composite pricing (base subscription fee plus metered usage plus one-time charges) is a particular strength for B2B SaaS businesses with non-standard pricing models.
For SaaS businesses with complex pricing models (tiered usage billing, per-seat pricing, hybrid models), Chargebee's flexibility exceeds what Stripe Billing offers out of the box. The dunning management features — automated retries, customer communication around failed payments — can meaningfully reduce involuntary churn. Revenue recognition and deferred revenue reporting simplify ASC 606 compliance.
The RevenueStory analytics module provides cohort analysis, churn prediction, and revenue waterfall reports that would otherwise require a separate analytics tool or significant custom development.
Pricing
Starter plan is free up to $100k annual revenue. Performance starts at $599 per month. Enterprise is custom.
Recurly: Subscription Billing for Scale
Recurly is a subscription billing platform similar to Chargebee but with a longer history, having been founded in 2009. It serves mid-market and enterprise subscription businesses, with notable customers including Twitch, Sling TV, and Asana. Its dunning logic and payment retry logic are considered particularly strong.
Recurly's Intelligent Retry engine uses machine learning to determine the optimal time to retry a failed payment — increasing recovery rates by an average of 19% compared to fixed retry schedules, according to Recurly's 2023 benchmarking data. For subscription businesses losing significant revenue to failed payments, this optimization has direct and measurable financial impact.
Recurly integrates with over 20 payment gateways and offers sophisticated reporting including cohort analysis, churn prediction, and MRR forecasting. It is better suited to established businesses than early-stage startups due to pricing.
Pricing
Starts at $249 per month plus 0.9% of revenue. Enterprise pricing is custom.
Mollie: European Alternative with Transparent Pricing
Mollie was founded in Amsterdam in 2004 and has grown into one of Europe's most popular payment platforms for SMBs, processing payments for over 250,000 businesses as of 2024. It offers local European payment methods — iDEAL, Bancontact, SOFORT, SEPA Direct Debit — that are essential for conversion in their respective markets but that Stripe supports less seamlessly.
iDEAL is used by 64% of Dutch online shoppers as their preferred payment method, according to Dutch payments industry research. Bancontact holds a similar dominant position in Belgium, used in over 50% of Belgian online transactions. For businesses selling to Dutch and Belgian consumers without supporting these methods, checkout conversion rates are materially lower. Mollie's deep integration of these local methods with minimal configuration is its primary competitive advantage over Stripe in these markets.
Mollie charges no monthly fees and competitive per-transaction rates. Its dashboard is clean, its integration documentation is well-maintained, and its support is notably responsive compared to Stripe's at smaller merchant volumes. For European businesses, particularly those in the Netherlands, Belgium, or Germany, Mollie is often the cost-effective first choice.
Pricing
0% monthly fee. Card transactions from 1.8% plus $0.25 in Europe. International cards from 2.9% plus $0.25.
2Checkout (Verifone): Legacy Global Commerce
2Checkout, now operating as Verifone after the 2020 acquisition, is a payment platform with a long history in global digital commerce. It offers merchant-of-record services similar to Paddle, broad country coverage, and integrations with major ecommerce platforms.
2Checkout's interface and developer tooling feel dated compared to Stripe or Paddle. The company has gone through multiple ownership changes and brand transitions. For established businesses with existing integrations, it remains functional. For new implementations, most developers will find Paddle or Stripe's global expansion features more developer-friendly.
The 2Monetize MoR tier, at 6.0% plus $0.60 per transaction, is the most expensive MoR option in this comparison. Its historical advantage was market access to geographies that Paddle and LemonSqueezy did not support — that advantage has eroded as those platforms expanded their coverage.
Pricing
2Sell plan charges 3.5% plus $0.35. 2Subscribe charges 4.5% plus $0.45. 2Monetize (MoR) charges 6.0% plus $0.60.
How to Choose the Right Payment Processor
The right choice depends on three dimensions: geography, business model, and technical resources.
By geography:
- US-centric business: Stripe or Square
- European business: Mollie (SMB) or Adyen (enterprise)
- Global software sales: Paddle or LemonSqueezy
- Enterprise multi-market: Adyen
By business model:
- Simple ecommerce: Stripe or Square
- Complex subscription billing: Stripe + Chargebee, or Recurly
- Software with global tax compliance: Paddle
- In-person retail: Square
- High-volume enterprise: Adyen
By technical capability:
- Developer team, custom integration: Stripe or Braintree
- Non-technical business owner: Square or PayPal
- Indie developer launching fast: LemonSqueezy
- Complex subscription logic without developer: Chargebee
For US-centric ecommerce and subscription businesses with engineering resources, Stripe remains the default for good reasons. For European businesses prioritizing local payment methods and no monthly fees, Mollie is often the better value. For software companies selling globally who want tax compliance handled automatically, Paddle is the clear winner despite higher fees. For enterprise merchants processing high volume across channels, Adyen's unified platform and superior authorization rates justify the more complex onboarding. For businesses integrating PayPal as a trust signal for consumers, Braintree offers the cleanest technical integration.
Fee Comparison at Different Volume Levels
The fee comparison looks different at different transaction volumes. At low volume, flat-rate simplicity wins. At high volume, rate differences compound significantly.
| Monthly Revenue | Stripe (2.9%+$0.30) | Mollie EU (1.8%+$0.25) | Paddle (5%+$0.50) | Adyen (est. 0.4%+$0.12) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | $320 | $205 | $555 | $52* |
| $50,000 | $1,520 | $1,025 | $2,550 | $212* |
| $200,000 | $6,020 | $4,025 | $10,100 | $824* |
*Adyen estimates assume 1,000 transactions at average $200 each; actual rates depend on negotiated terms.
At $200,000 monthly revenue (a typical growth-stage SaaS company), the fee difference between Mollie and Stripe for a European business is approximately $2,000 per month — $24,000 per year. That differential justifies significant integration investment. The difference between Stripe and Paddle reflects the tax compliance value Paddle provides; whether that trade-off is favorable depends entirely on the cost of managing tax compliance in-house.
Practical Takeaways
If your primary market is Europe and local payment methods matter, Mollie's fee structure and local method support outperform Stripe. If you sell SaaS globally and want zero tax compliance overhead, Paddle's MoR model justifies the higher fee. If you process high volume across online and in-person channels, Adyen's unified acquiring reduces authorization failure rates. If PayPal consumer trust is essential for your checkout conversion, Braintree packages both cards and PayPal cleanly. If you have complex subscription pricing, Chargebee or Recurly add billing logic that Stripe Billing lacks. Monitor LemonSqueezy's roadmap carefully following the Stripe acquisition before building on it.
References
- Stripe. (2024). Stripe pricing and documentation. stripe.com/pricing
- PayPal. (2024). PayPal merchant fees. paypal.com/merchantfees
- Square. (2024). Square payment processing fees. squareup.com/us/en/payments
- Braintree. (2024). Braintree pricing. braintreepayments.com/pricing
- Adyen. (2024). Adyen interchange-plus pricing model. adyen.com
- Paddle. (2024). Paddle merchant of record explained. paddle.com/blog/merchant-of-record
- Stripe. (2024). Stripe acquires Lemon Squeezy. stripe.com/newsroom
- Chargebee. (2024). Chargebee subscription management. chargebee.com/pricing
- Recurly. (2024). Recurly subscription billing platform. recurly.com
- Mollie. (2024). Mollie payment methods and pricing. mollie.com/en
- Verifone. (2024). 2Checkout platform overview. 2checkout.com
- McKinsey Global Payments Report. (2023). Global Payments 2023: Forging a path in a new landscape. mckinsey.com
- Baymard Institute. (2023). Checkout abandonment research. baymard.com
- Adyen. (2023). Annual Report: Total processed volume. investors.adyen.com
- Recurly. (2023). Subscription benchmark report: intelligent retry results. recurly.com
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cheapest alternative to Stripe?
Mollie charges no monthly fee and from 1.8% + \(0.25 per transaction for European card payments — cheaper than Stripe for EU merchants. Square also has no monthly fee and lower in-person rates (2.6% + \)0.10). For SaaS, LemonSqueezy and Paddle charge more per transaction but eliminate tax compliance costs.
Which Stripe alternative is best for selling software and SaaS?
Paddle is the leading choice for global SaaS — it acts as merchant of record and handles VAT, US sales tax, and consumption taxes in 200+ jurisdictions automatically, replacing what would otherwise require tax registration in each country.
Is PayPal a good alternative to Stripe?
PayPal is best used as a supplementary checkout option rather than a primary processor — it lifts conversion in markets where consumers expect to see it, but its developer experience is weaker than Stripe's and its account freeze policy has frustrated many merchants.
What is the best Stripe alternative for enterprise businesses?
Adyen is the enterprise-grade alternative, used by Spotify, Netflix, and Microsoft. Its direct acquiring model produces higher authorization rates than third-party-acquirer platforms, and its unified commerce covers online, in-store, and in-app payments in a single platform.
What is a merchant of record and why does it matter?
A merchant of record (MoR) is the legal entity that sells to customers and is responsible for collecting and remitting taxes. Paddle and LemonSqueezy operate as MoRs, handling VAT and sales tax globally — critical for software companies selling internationally who want to avoid registering for tax in dozens of jurisdictions.
