Stripe

What it is

Stripe is payment infrastructure. Not just a payment form — it handles one-time charges, subscriptions, invoicing, refunds, disputes, tax calculation, revenue recognition, fraud detection, and financial reporting. It is the standard for internet payments because it's simply the best product in the category, by a wide margin.

Who it's for

• Any app that takes money — SaaS subscriptions, one-time purchases, marketplaces
• Developers who want to implement payments correctly the first time
• Businesses that need billing, invoicing, and tax compliance without building it
• Anyone building in any country Stripe supports (46+ countries)

The good

The API is the gold standard. Stripe's API design is so good it's used as an example in API design courses. Idempotency keys, webhook events, versioning, error codes — all exactly right. You'll enjoy implementing this.

Docs are the best technical docs anywhere. Every endpoint is documented with curl, Python, Ruby, Node, and PHP examples. Interactive testing built in. Guides for every use case. The documentation alone is worth the transaction fee.

Stripe Checkout handles the hard stuff. PCI compliance, 3D Secure, GDPR, Apple Pay, Google Pay — drop in Checkout or Elements and these are solved. Building equivalent from scratch would take months and a lawyer.

Billing and subscriptions are properly designed. Trial periods, usage-based billing, seat pricing, annual discounts, proration — the subscription model handles edge cases you won't think of until you need them.

Stripe Radar (fraud). ML-based fraud detection included. You can write your own rules. For most apps it runs silently and catches real fraud you'd have never seen coming.

The bad

2.9% + 30¢ is not cheap. For high-ticket B2B SaaS ($500+/mo), this is fine. For high-volume low-ticket transactions (under $10), the fixed 30¢ eats margin fast. Braintree and Adyen negotiate lower rates at volume; Stripe does too, but you need to be doing real volume to get there.

International support is uneven. Stripe supports 46+ countries but payout timing and feature availability vary by country. If your users are primarily outside the US, EU, or UK — check Stripe Atlas support for your region before committing.

Support is email-only for most tiers. Getting a human on the phone requires a paid plan. For most integrations you'll never need it — the docs are that good — but when something goes wrong with a live payment, waiting for email response is stressful.

Vendor lock-in is real. Migrating away from Stripe means migrating all your customer payment methods, subscriptions, and billing history. Nobody does this casually.

Pricing reality

2.9% + 30¢ per transaction is the standard rate. No monthly fees, no setup fees. At $1M ARR, you're paying roughly $29,000/year to Stripe — expensive, but cheaper than building and maintaining payment infrastructure. Enterprise pricing (Stripe negotiated rate) kicks in around $1M+/year in volume and can drop to 2.2% + 25¢.

Verdict

Stripe is the correct default for payments. It's not the cheapest option at scale, but it's the best product, and payments is not the place to save money by using a worse tool. Use Stripe until you have a specific reason not to — and that reason usually only appears at significant transaction volume.