Stripe

Stripe is pure pay-as-you-go with no monthly or setup fee. Online payments are charged at 2.9% + 30c, and in-person payments through Stripe Terminal are charged at 2.7% + 5c. International cards and currency conversion add a small extra percentage. There is no contract, so you only pay per transaction.

Stripe is strongest online. It has the deepest payment APIs, the best subscription billing engine, and the widest set of integrations for e-commerce, marketplaces, and SaaS. Stripe Terminal adds in-person card processing at 2.7% + 5c, and it works well, but the online product is where Stripe leads the field.

No. Stripe's base monthly fee is Free, with pricing entirely per transaction. Add-on products like Billing, Radar, and Tax are priced separately if you use them, but the core processing has no fixed monthly cost and no minimum.

Yes. Stripe Radar uses machine learning to score and block fraud, with a natural-language Radar Assistant and Smart Disputes for chargebacks. Stripe also runs an official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so AI assistants and agents can connect to Stripe directly rather than through a third-party tool.

Yes, and it is one of Stripe's standout strengths. Stripe Billing is widely considered the best subscription and recurring-billing engine on the market, handling trials, proration, metered usage, and dunning. That makes Stripe a natural fit for SaaS and any business with subscription revenue.

Stripe Connect supports two main split approaches: destination charges (the platform collects payment and automatically routes a portion to a connected seller) and separate charges and transfers (charge the buyer directly, then transfer a share to each seller independently). Both methods let you programme your commission logic via the API and settle funds to sellers on a daily, weekly, monthly or manual schedule.

The standard rate on Stripe Connect is 2.9% of the transaction value plus a $0.30 fixed fee per charge. If you use Stripe to set pricing on behalf of your sellers, an additional Connect platform fee applies per payout.

No. The monthly platform fee is Free and there is no minimum monthly processing volume. You pay only for successful transactions.

Stripe offers two onboarding paths: a Stripe-hosted flow (sellers complete identity verification on a Stripe-branded page) and an embedded flow you build into your own UI using Stripe Identity. Both collect the documentation required for US KYC and anti-money-laundering obligations. Stripe manages ongoing compliance monitoring for connected accounts once onboarding is complete.

Yes. Stripe supports delayed payouts so you can hold collected funds in a balance and release them to sellers only after a condition is met, such as order fulfilment or a dispute window closing. Manual transfers give you full control over the timing of each payout.

Yes. Stripe can collect payments in more than 135 presentment currencies and settle to connected accounts in more than 40 currencies. For US marketplaces with international sellers, Stripe handles the currency conversion automatically at the point of payout.

Yes. There is no monthly fee and no minimum volume, so an early-stage platform pays nothing until it processes transactions. Connect charges are usage-based on top of the standard processing rate: $2 per monthly active account, and 0.25% + $0.25 per payout sent. That means costs scale with the number of sellers you actually pay, not with the size of your platform.