[Comparing] Stripe vs Braintree vs PayPal
Online payment services like Dwolla or Skrill are not uncommon for both businesses and customers since they manage transactions cash — free. Nowadays, they are getting more and more important in the app development industry era due to security and encryption. If you are running the two-sided marketplace, e-commerce site or apps including transactions, choosing an online payment system is one of the most important steps to be cared about.
In this article, we will give an overview of the three most popular online payment services: Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal. Hope this below information makes it simpler for you in choosing the one that fits the best to your goals and your customers’ demands.
A brief information
Stripe is a powerful payment engine which lets people (both individual and companies) pay by credit cards. This system owns 10.3% of global market share and ranks second after PayPal. Stripe is now available in 26 countries (mostly in the United State, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Spain) and is used by Foursquare, Dribbble, Amazon, Shopify, UNICEF, and other organizations.
Meanwhile, Braintree provides mobile and web payment solutions for e-commerce enterprises such as Uber, Twilio, Airbnb, GitHub, and many others. This payment method appears in 46 countries including North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
On the other hand, PayPal is the most popular payment method in the world with 73.1% of global market share (over 200 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe). This payment service allows people to send money via phone, text message, email or Skype. PayPal provides peer — to — peer transactions and lets auction sites, online vendors and corporate users connect to bank accounts and credit cards. You can process your payment by PayPal when using eBay, Expedia, Pandora, eBay, Expedia, and Booking.com.
PayPal, Braintree, and Stripe have their pros and cons. Thus, we will compare three types of online payment methods by looking closely to their specific
Pricing
There is no big difference between the three payment gateways. Also, the price possibly changes depending on countries and their currencies. Let’s look at the table to see clearly:
All three online services support recurring billing which shortens payment process conveniently.
Supporting payment methods
You can transfer money by fundamental payment methods like Visa, Master Card and American Express in all Stripe, PayPal and Braintree or other services. The difference between them and other services is that Stripe, PayPal and Braintree also accept JCB, Maestro, Discover, and Diners Club credit cards.
In terms of specific, Stripe is an ideal solution for e-commerce website targeting China market since it allows users to pay via AliPay — a Chinese platform. Also, Stripe offers ACH (Automated Clearing House) which direct charges to bank accounts.
Meanwhile, a business between Braintree and Paypal helps people using Venmo — a digital wallet of PayPal possibly do payments through Braintree. Both Braintree and Stripe accept bitcoins — thing that is not available on PayPal.
Integration tools
There are nearly 100 tools which can integrate with Stripe, PayPal and Braintree. This table below will show you the most outstanding ones:
Supporting platform
Stripe, PayPal and Braintree are built with APIs which suit for all of the primary programming languages such as PHP, Python, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, and Node.js. These APIs are implemented correctly since they are well — documented in detail. In case of developing apps in various platforms, three payment services have APIs for iOS and Android to make it easier in expanding customer groups.
Encryption
All three gateways can protect transaction information and prevent fraud. The encryption of all follows PCI rules. Moreover, Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal provide sandbox which protects your devices from system failures or software vulnerabilities.
In the end, when you consider to pick up one from three online payment services as well as asking for a website application developer to integrate to your website, you should evaluate three factors: ease of use, cost and payment methods. Generally, PayPal is the easiest service to use but people will find it hard due to its limitation of payment methods. Meanwhile, the others possible offer unique payment options which are available only in some countries and Stripe does not require an additional fee for international transactions. Moreover, in cases of using payment services for app business purposes, you need to research deeply about customers’ locations and financial conditions to optimize the profits.
