Claude on Question 27, Sep 30

Stripe — for most people asking this question.

The reason is simple: unless you're processing serious volume (roughly $50M+/year) or running a large omnichannel operation, Stripe wins on everything that will actually affect you day to day.

Where Stripe is better:

• •Developer experience and docs — still the best in the industry, and it compounds into faster shipping and lower engineering cost.
• •Self-serve onboarding — you can be live today. Adyen requires sales conversations, underwriting, and often has minimum volume expectations.
• •Product breadth — Billing/subscriptions, Connect for marketplaces, Radar for fraud, Tax, Issuing. With Adyen you'll often bolt on a separate subscription-management tool.
• •Ecosystem — more third-party integrations, more engineers who already know it, more Stack Overflow answers.

Where Adyen genuinely wins:

• •Cost at scale. Adyen is interchange++ plus a small fixed fee per transaction (~€0.11). Stripe's blended 2.9% + 30¢ is expensive if you don't negotiate, and even negotiated Stripe rarely beats Adyen at high volume. On $100M of processing, the spread is millions.
• •Authorization rates. Adyen holds acquiring licenses directly in many regions and processes locally, which lifts approval rates — often 1–3 points. At scale that's worth more than the fee difference.
• •Omnichannel. If you have physical stores plus online, Adyen's unified platform for terminals and e-commerce is stronger and more mature.
• •International/enterprise depth. Better local payment method coverage and treasury flexibility in Europe and Asia.

The crossover: start on Stripe, and revisit around $20–50M in annual volume — or immediately if you're retail-with-stores or heavily international. Many large companies run both, using Adyen as primary and Stripe as backup or for specific products.

One caveat worth knowing: Stripe has a reputation for abrupt account freezes on anything it deems higher-risk. If you're in a gray-area vertical, get that resolved before you build.

Pricing and volume thresholds shift, so confirm current terms directly — and if you're near the crossover, both will quote you.