PayPal x Stripe: Gateway Battle

In this post, we'll do a full review of a gateway battle with a Stripe vs PayPal comparison, to help you choose your payment gateway.

By Claudio Pires
Updated on October 27, 2022
PayPal x Stripe: Gateway Battle

Starting an e-commerce business is an exciting and chaotic time. In this post, we will thoroughly analyze a payment gateway battle between Stripe x PayPal and make a comparison. We will compare transaction and service fees, API, security, customer service, and all aspects to help you choose your payment gateway.

Whenever you buy something online, there is a very high chance that your payment will go through PayPal or Stripe. Apart from payment gateways like Amazon Pay and others that stand out on purpose, Stripe and PayPal are the big payment gateway in this market. So, if you sell stuff on the internet, one of your biggest choices will be about how you make payments. That choice comes down, usually, to PayPal x Stripe.

You get many of the same benefits as any payment gateway (you get cash being the main one, and PayPal and Stripe have similar fees). Still, there are some key differences comparison to Stripe and PayPal that make the choice something where you must enter all the facts. After all, your business is your livelihood, and we want it to get better and better.

A Paypal x Stripe Gateway Battle: PayPal

Firstly, it is one of the oldest payment platforms on the internet, and because of that, it’s pretty much everywhere. The gist is simple: it’s an online, one-stop wallet for payments. Users give them access to whatever credit cards and/or bank accounts and/or addresses they want, and they’re ready for their shopping spree in your store.

PayPal Pros

As I said above, the PayPal payment gateway is everywhere in this battle. In many ways, it has become the de facto way to pay on the web. In most cases, people can choose between credit card payments or PayPal. For you, your customers probably already have a PayPal account. So they press one button to play, and you get your money and their address, and all other relevant info right then and there.

PayPal also offers tons of buyer and seller protection, letting you go through specific and well-laid-out processes for dispute settlement.

It’s easy. Not just from the customer’s side, either. From your perspective, PayPal is a default payment method — if not the only one — for many plugins and e-commerce solutions. In many cases, all you need is to have an account ready, and you just put in your email address. With that done, you can get paid. See? Easy.

Reports, analytics, and other tools are within easy reach. You can find any information you need on your PayPal dashboard. Click a few buttons, run a few reports, and you can export pretty much any data you need in PDF, CSV, TAB, or QuickBooks formats.

PayPal lives everywhere you do. By that, in this Gateway Battle of Stripe and PayPal, I mean that there are approximately a zillion countries in which you can use PayPal. If you live in one of the 200+ countries and/or use or want to accept one of their 25 accepted currencies, that’s fine. PayPal gives you one of the biggest networks in terms of accepting payments, no matter where you are or who you are selling to.

PayPal Cons

While you don’t need a separate PayPal account to pay in most cases, it’s pretty much necessary. Some people don’t want a PayPal account and want to throw their card numbers at your store. If PayPal is your only option for payment, that alone will run some people away.

PayPal is a kind of its ecosystem. With everything handled within their platform, you essentially link out to them for your customers, and they get redirected back to your store. That comes with a slew of issues, the most common of which is that the redirects get interrupted, and the sale goes wonky.

Customers pay by PayPal. That’s it. Sure, it connects to users’ bank accounts and credit cards, but there are no Apple Pay, Android Pay, Bitcoin, or other cryptocurrency payments. If it’s not secured in PayPal’s ecosystem, then it’s not part of your users’ wallets.

A Paypal x Stripe Gateway Battle: Stripe

There are quite a few different payment gateways that aren’t PayPal, but Stripe is the big kahuna of them all. It’s a major gateway that processes all sorts of different kinds of currencies and payment types. They’re not a front-end brand like PayPal, where you have an account. Moreover, they are solely a behind-the-scenes processor, and your customers will only interact with your site, not Stripe’s.

Stripe Pros

Stripe is a straight-up, plain-and-simple payment gateway. They process credit card payments. That’s what they do. Because of that singular focus, you have access to a ton more payment options than with PayPal, including Bitcoin, Apple Pay, Android Pay, checks, credit and debit cards from all major companies (worldwide), and ECH and EFT transfers. It’s all up to you what you take. You are in total control with Stripe. They handle the payments for you.

Countless API integrations are at your fingertips with Stripe. Instead of relying solely on their internal reporting and analytics, you can seamlessly integrate Stripe’s dashboard with tons of software. And outside of having dedicated libraries for platforms built on Ruby, React Native, Laravel, Angular, Vue, and many, many others, they provide official plugins for WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and others.

Big-time corporations use Stripe as their payment gateway. When Target, UnderArmour, Blue Apron, and Facebook use Stripe, you know it’s worth at least looking at it.

Stripe Cons

Let’s be totally honest: getting Stripe set up can be a pain. The setup process has made many people run screaming back to the welcoming arms of PayPal. (Or Square, but that’s a different post entirely). Stripe requires lots of API key juggling, and your site absolutely must be locked down by SSL, which it should be anyway. If you’re on WordPress, there are both oodles and bunches of plugins for you to use to help ease some of this pain. You’ll still need to familiarize yourself with the documentation and procedures, which you should be doing anyway.

It is not available everywhere in the world. They are working on expanding their network, but if you don’t live in one of their supported countries, you can’t accept payments at all. However, if Stripe does support your country, you can take payments from anywhere. For example, if you’re in South Africa, which is not supported, you can take no payments from the United States or elsewhere. But if you’re in the United States, you can take payments from customers in South Africa.

Should You Choose PayPal or Stripe?

Honestly, in comparison Stripe and PayPal use both. You want your customers to have as many payment options as possible. People have their preferences on how they want to pay. The only downsides to this approach are that you have to maintain two separate services and keep the data organized, and that’s just extra work. That means more responsibility for someone on your team, but it’s also likely to have a greater ROI than limiting yourself to just one.

And The Gateway Battle Winner Between PayPal vs. Stripe Is?

In conclusion, in Stripe x PayPal comparison, you should choose PayPal if you want a simple and easy solution. So if you need to capture payments and not worry about many extraneous details, you can’t go wrong with PayPal. It comes standard with most platforms, and people can start paying you right away. You can add Stripe integration later, so maybe starting with PayPal is a good idea.

Finally, you should choose Stripe if you want a fully integrated payment system. It’s way more complicated to get going. Once you do, it runs pretty solidly and silently in the background. Your customers get a lot more options for payments from Stripe. Those additional plugins, integrations, and documentation offer a stellar service.

What influenced your decision in the PayPal x Stripe battle?

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.