Jul 02, 2025·8 min
Add Online Payments to Your Website: Stripe vs PayPal
Learn the basics of adding online payments to your website and how Stripe and PayPal differ on setup, checkout experience, fees, and best use cases.
Learn the basics of adding online payments to your website and how Stripe and PayPal differ on setup, checkout experience, fees, and best use cases.
When people say they want to “add online payments” to a website, they’re usually describing a small system made of a few moving parts. Understanding those pieces makes it much easier to compare Stripe vs PayPal without getting lost in jargon.
In practice, providers often combine these roles. What you’re “setting up” is mostly an account, a checkout method, and the way your site talks to that provider.
Most websites start with credit/debit cards. Depending on your country and provider settings, you may also be able to add:
The exact mix depends on where you sell, where your customers are, and what the provider supports for your account.
A typical card payment follows this path:
The key takeaway: you’re not just “adding a button.” You’re choosing how customers pay, how approvals happen, and how money reaches your bank—plus how much control you want over the checkout experience.
Before you compare Stripe vs PayPal, make sure your site is ready to accept payments without awkward workarounds. This “pre-flight check” helps you avoid choosing the wrong checkout type—or realizing too late that your product, pricing, or flow doesn’t match how customers actually buy.
Different payment setups fit different business types. Be clear about which bucket you’re in:
Why this matters: subscription tools, payout features, and dispute handling can look very different depending on the model—even if both providers can “take a card.”
Write down two simple numbers: your average order value (AOV) and your top customer countries.
If you’re planning to sell outside your home country soon, pick a checkout approach that won’t force a redesign later.
Decide how important a seamless on-site checkout is for you.
This choice affects conversion, branding, and trust. Some audiences prefer familiar “wallet-style” options, while others expect a standard card form.
Be honest about your trade-off between speed and customization:
A practical tip: decide who will own updates—you, a developer, or your website builder/plugin—because that affects how easy it is to maintain long-term.
If you can answer these four areas in a sentence each, you’re ready to compare Stripe vs PayPal without guesswork.
Stripe and PayPal both let you accept online payments, but they feel different in day-to-day use. Think of Stripe as a flexible payments platform that blends into your site, while PayPal is a familiar wallet brand customers may already trust.
Stripe is popular with businesses that want a clean, customizable checkout and room to grow. It’s especially strong if you plan to tailor the payment experience to match your brand, offer multiple payment methods, or connect payments to other tools (like subscriptions, invoicing, or reporting).
PayPal is known for speed to launch and its wallet-based checkout—many shoppers can pay using their PayPal balance or linked bank account/card without re-entering details. For some audiences, the PayPal button itself increases confidence because it’s recognizable.
In practice, Stripe often feels like “your” checkout, while PayPal can feel like a separate, familiar payment option customers choose.
Many sites offer Stripe for card payments and PayPal as an extra button for people who prefer wallets. This can reduce checkout friction without forcing you to pick one “winner,” especially if you sell to mixed age groups or international customers with different payment habits.
Setting up Stripe or PayPal isn’t just “making an account.” You’re opening a financial services relationship, so both providers will ask for details that help them confirm who you are, what you sell, and where money should be paid out.
Stripe account creation is quick, but verification is where most people spend time. Expect to provide basic business info (legal name, address, tax details where applicable) plus a bank account for payouts.
Inside the Stripe Dashboard, you’ll mainly use:
Verification may include confirming an owner’s identity and, for some businesses, additional documentation.
For PayPal, you’ll typically start with a PayPal Business account. To remove limitations and process smoothly, plan to confirm:
PayPal also emphasizes disputes and seller protection rules, so take a moment to review the account limits and notifications after signup.
Many businesses can take a first payment the same day—especially with PayPal. Stripe is often fast too, but time-to-first-payment varies by business (industry, country, sales volume, and how quickly you submit verification info).
The usual delays come from mismatched business details, bank account verification hiccups, missing identity documents, or selling products in restricted categories. Gathering documents and matching names/addresses exactly can save you days of back-and-forth.
Your checkout is where visitors decide whether they trust you enough to pay. Stripe and PayPal can both get you to “card accepted,” but the way you present checkout (and where customers complete payment) affects trust, speed, and conversion—especially on mobile.
Hosted checkout sends customers to a payment page managed by Stripe or PayPal (sometimes on a branded page, sometimes in a pop-up). This usually means faster setup and less maintenance.
Embedded/on-site checkout keeps customers on your site while they enter payment details. It can feel more seamless, but it often takes more implementation work and you’re responsible for more of the edge cases (validation, errors, updates).
In plain terms:
Stripe Checkout is Stripe’s hosted checkout page. You can usually style it with your logo/colors, and it’s designed to work well on mobile with features like address autocomplete and saved payment methods (where available). It’s a common choice when you want a modern checkout without building every detail yourself.
Stripe Payment Links are shareable URLs that open a hosted checkout. They’re useful for simple selling scenarios (single product, services, invoices, social media) where you don’t want to build a full cart flow.
PayPal Smart Buttons typically appear on your product or cart page and let customers pay using their PayPal account (and sometimes cards, depending on setup and region). The upside is familiarity—many buyers recognize PayPal and trust it.
PayPal Checkout generally refers to the PayPal-branded flow where customers authenticate with PayPal, then confirm payment. It can reduce typing because customers don’t have to enter card details on your site.
On mobile, small friction becomes a big drop-off. A checkout that’s fast, readable, and doesn’t force extra account creation usually converts better.
Key things to watch:
If you’re unsure, start with a hosted checkout (Stripe Checkout or PayPal Checkout) to launch quickly, then move to a more customized on-site experience once you know your customers’ needs.
If you’re building the entire app at the same time (site + checkout + backend fulfillment), a vibe-coding platform like Koder.ai can help you ship faster: you can describe the flow in chat, generate a React front end with a Go + PostgreSQL backend, and iterate on webhooks, order states, and confirmation emails without rebuilding everything manually.
Fees are usually the biggest “surprise” after you turn payments on—not because providers hide them, but because the real cost depends on what your customers actually do.
When you compare Stripe vs PayPal, make sure you’re lining up the same categories:
Also watch for “extras” that can affect totals, like instant payouts, advanced fraud tools, or micropayment pricing.
Pricing changes based on country, card type (debit vs credit, rewards cards), and payment method (cards vs wallets vs bank transfers). A US-only store with mostly debit cards can look very different from a business selling internationally with higher-ticket orders.
Start with your average order value (AOV) and your typical mix of payments.
Example: If your AOV is $50 and your provider charges 2.9% + $0.30, then your baseline processing cost per order is:
Now adjust for reality: if 20% of orders are international and cost +1%, add $0.10 on those orders on average (20% × $50 × 1%). Do the same for expected refunds, chargebacks, and currency conversion.
Taking payments online means handling card data safely—even if you never “see” the card number. The good news: Stripe and PayPal are built to do the heavy lifting, especially if you use their hosted checkout pages.
PCI DSS is a set of security rules created by the card networks. Think of it as: “prove you’re not storing or exposing card details in unsafe ways.” Your obligations depend on how you collect payment information.
If customers enter card details on Stripe Checkout or PayPal Checkout (hosted by them), sensitive card data is handled on their systems. That typically reduces your PCI scope to a simpler self-assessment (often just confirming you don’t store card numbers and you use secure practices).
If you build a custom card form on your site, your compliance burden increases because more of the payment flow touches your servers and pages.
Both providers offer tools that prevent fraud and reduce failed payments:
Even with hosted checkout, you’re responsible for basic site security:
Refunds and disputes are part of running online payments—so it helps to understand what’s normal, what costs money, and what you can do to prevent problems before they start.
A full refund reverses the entire purchase amount. A partial refund returns only part of it (useful for returns, price adjustments, or “keep it + discount” situations).
Typical timeline: you can usually issue a refund immediately from your payment dashboard, but the customer doesn’t see the money right away. Many banks take 5–10 business days to post the refund, sometimes longer depending on the card and country.
Important detail when comparing Stripe vs PayPal: some processors don’t return the original processing fees when you refund, while others may return part of them depending on the policy and region. When you’re estimating costs, include the “we’ll have refunds sometimes” reality.
A chargeback is when the customer asks their bank/card issuer to reverse the charge. Common triggers include:
To fight a chargeback, you’ll typically need evidence such as:
Stripe and PayPal both provide dispute workflows, but the day-to-day experience can differ. When comparing, look for:
If your customers often pay via PayPal wallet, you may also deal with PayPal’s Resolution Center processes. With card payments (often via Stripe), disputes generally follow card network rules.
A few small changes can prevent a surprising number of headaches:
Handled well, refunds are just customer service. Disputes are where costs and time add up—so prevention is usually the best “feature” you can build into your checkout.
Recurring billing is where payment tools start to feel less like a “button on your site” and more like a system: you’re managing renewals, plan changes, failed payments, and customer expectations.
Stripe Subscriptions is built around products and prices (often called “plans” in plain English). You can bill monthly or yearly, add usage-based charges, and automatically email or host invoices/receipts depending on how you configure checkout.
A key concept is proration: if someone upgrades mid-cycle, Stripe can automatically charge the difference (or credit them) instead of waiting for the next renewal. This is useful for tiered memberships and SaaS-style upgrades.
Stripe also handles common subscription plumbing: retries for failed cards, dunning emails, tax options (depending on setup), and customer self-service via a portal if you enable it.
PayPal supports recurring billing through subscription features and button-based flows, and it can be a good fit if your customers prefer paying from their PayPal balance.
Before committing, confirm details that can vary by region/account type: how plan changes work, whether proration is supported the way you expect, what customer update/cancel flows look like, and how well it fits your checkout (on-site vs redirect).
If you need free trials, coupons/discounts, or invoices (especially for B2B customers), map those requirements early. Some businesses also need downloadable invoices with VAT/tax fields, purchase order references, or manual invoicing for bank-transfer customers.
If you offer multiple tiers, frequent upgrades/downgrades, or want more control over invoices and proration, Stripe is often the smoother path. If your audience strongly prefers PayPal and your plans are simple (one or two tiers, minimal changes), PayPal subscriptions may be enough—just validate the edge cases before launch.
Selling beyond your home country is mostly about three practical questions: what currencies can customers pay in, what currency you’ll receive, and how quickly funds land in your bank.
Both Stripe and PayPal support a wide range of currencies, but the detail that surprises people is settlement.
With Stripe, you can usually present prices in many currencies and, depending on your business location, settle into one (or sometimes multiple) bank currencies. If you charge in a currency you don’t settle in, Stripe will convert it (with a conversion fee).
With PayPal, customers can pay from their PayPal balance, bank, or card in many currencies. You may end up holding multiple currency balances inside PayPal, then convert when you withdraw or when PayPal needs to complete a transaction.
Practical tip: pick 1–2 primary currencies to price in, and treat others as an add-on for international customers only if your margins can handle conversion costs.
Stripe payouts are typically automatic on a schedule (often daily/weekly), with a delay that varies by country and risk history. Funds go straight to your linked bank account.
PayPal often feels faster because money appears in your PayPal balance quickly, but getting it to your bank depends on withdrawal timing and method (standard bank transfers can take extra time; instant transfers may cost more).
Decide which matters more: “money visible now” (PayPal balance) vs “money deposited predictably” (scheduled bank payouts).
Neither tool replaces proper tax handling. Coordinate with your accountant on:
Plan your bookkeeping before you launch:
A little structure here saves hours when you do your first tax filing or dispute review.
The best choice depends less on the brand name and more on how you want checkout to feel, what you’re selling, and how much control you need. Here are common scenarios that make the decision easier.
Pick Stripe if you care about a highly tailored checkout and expect your payment needs to grow over time.
PayPal can be the fastest win when your customers already trust and use it.
If you can support it, offering both Stripe (cards/Apple Pay/Google Pay) and PayPal often improves conversion—customers pick the option they recognize and prefer. It can also help internationally, where payment habits vary.
The biggest mistake is choosing solely by the headline processing fee. Fees vary by card type, country, refunds, chargebacks, and currency conversion—so the “cheapest” option on paper isn’t always cheaper in real life.
Also consider the less visible costs: a clunky checkout can lower conversion, and limited subscription tools can create manual work later. If you’re unsure, start with the option that best matches your checkout needs today, but choose one that won’t block you six months from now.
Before you announce “we accept cards,” run a quick launch pass. Payment setups often fail for small, fixable reasons: a missing webhook, a confusing error message, or an email that never sends.
Both Stripe and PayPal provide test environments (“sandbox” or “test mode”) so you can simulate real scenarios without moving money. Use them to confirm:
If your site relies on webhooks (common for Stripe Checkout and many PayPal integrations), test that events are received and processed—this is where many launches quietly break.
Once you switch to live mode, double-check the customer experience end-to-end:
Set up basic measurement so you can spot drop-off points:
Document your setup (accounts, keys, webhooks, refund steps) so future changes don’t break payments. Then schedule a 30-day review: revisit fees, conversion rate, and checkout friction—and adjust pricing or UX based on what customers actually do.
If you want a smoother iteration loop after launch, consider building your payments flow in a way that’s easy to version and roll back. For example, Koder.ai supports snapshots and rollback, plus source code export—useful when you’re adjusting checkout UX, webhook handling, or subscription logic and want a safe path back if a change impacts conversion.
You’re typically setting up three things:
It’s less about “adding a button” and more about choosing how customers pay and how money reaches your bank.
A payment processor moves money through card networks/banks.
A payment gateway securely transmits payment details and returns approval/decline.
Checkout is the customer-facing page or form where payment happens.
Many modern providers bundle processor + gateway, so the biggest decision becomes which checkout experience you want to run.
Stripe is commonly the card processing + gateway layer with flexible checkout options (hosted or embedded).
PayPal is best known as a wallet payment method (PayPal button/flow), and in some regions it also supports broader card processing.
Practically: Stripe often feels like “your checkout,” while PayPal often feels like an additional, familiar option customers choose.
Start with:
Your best mix depends on your customer countries, device usage (mobile vs desktop), and the provider features available for your account.
Hosted checkout is usually best if you want to launch quickly with fewer compliance and maintenance headaches.
Choose hosted when you want:
Choose embedded when you need tighter branding, a custom flow, or deeper control over the on-site experience—and you can maintain it.
In many cases, yes. A common setup is:
This often improves conversion by giving shoppers a choice, especially if you sell internationally or to mixed demographics.
Both providers typically require:
Most delays come from mismatched details (names/addresses), missing documents, or restricted product categories. Collect your docs first and enter information consistently to avoid back-and-forth.
Look beyond the headline rate and compare:
A practical approach is to estimate costs using your and your expected mix of domestic vs international payments.
If customers enter card details on Stripe Checkout or PayPal Checkout (hosted by them), sensitive card data stays on their systems, which usually reduces your PCI burden.
You still need to secure your own site and accounts:
Refunds are usually easy to issue from the provider dashboard, but banks often take 5–10 business days (or longer) to post them.
Chargebacks/disputes are more work: you’ll need evidence like order details, delivery proof, and policy screenshots.
To reduce disputes:
Also consider enabling 3D Secure and basic fraud checks where available.
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