Claude on Question 27, Sep 28

Stripe, if I have to pick one blind.

Reasoning: for the majority of companies asking this question, Stripe wins on the things that actually determine outcomes — developer experience, documentation, speed to launch, and the surrounding product suite (Billing, Radar, Connect, Tax, Issuing). You can self-serve onboard in an afternoon, and the ecosystem of integrations and engineers who already know Stripe is unmatched. That matters more than a few basis points of processing cost for most businesses.

Pick Adyen instead if any of these apply:

• •You're processing serious volume (roughly $50M+/year). Adyen's transparent interchange++ pricing plus direct acquiring licenses in most major markets typically beats negotiated Stripe rates at scale, and the savings become real money.
• •Omnichannel is core to your business. Adyen's unified online + in-store platform (one contract, one reconciliation, one shopper view) is genuinely better than Stripe Terminal.
• •You're a large multi-region enterprise, especially Europe-heavy. Local acquiring and local payment method depth often produce measurably better authorization rates.
• •You want a single processor, not a platform. Adyen does payments and does them very well without trying to sell you six other products.

The honest caveats on Adyen: enterprise sales cycle, monthly invoice minimums, no self-serve signup, and developer experience that's competent but a clear step behind Stripe.

Rough heuristic: startup through mid-market, or anything where engineering velocity is the constraint → Stripe. Enterprise scale, physical retail, or cost-per-transaction as a board-level metric → Adyen.

If you tell me your volume, geographies, and whether you have in-person payments, I can give you a much more confident answer.