If you’re looking to accept online payments as part of your business, you’re likely to integrate a third party website to make a sale or keep your audience within your website to make online payments. 

Choosing the right online payment service can be tricky—there are multiple options in the market with specific advantages and drawbacks. The two major players in the online payment service providers are Stripe and Braintree. They may seem to offer similar payment services, and there are few differences in terms of situations and payment gateways that would not work for your business. The blog aims to compare the two famous players in the marketplace where you can use what. 

The payment processors like Stripe and Braintree provide a transparent, affordable, and flexible payment process to their customers and clients.

As many people today prefer using mobile wallets over hard cash, the businesses are moving towards integrating payment gateways into websites to facilitate smooth payment processes. Stripe and Braintree are predominantly used among SaaS companies, crowdfunding platforms, eCommerce businesses, and on-demand platforms. 

If you’re starting with any one of these, let’s understand the online payment system and which one you can integrate for your online business.

What is a Payment Gateway?

Payment gateways are the authorized online payment services that help businesses perform credit or direct payments for e-commerce, online retailers, and other online marketplaces. The payment processors allow users to check for fraud and transaction history. Depending on the payment gateway providers, they charge a certain percentage of the payment as fees to offer these services. 

It is essential to understand which one is best suitable for your business and how the payment gateways work. Here are some refined reasons why it’s vital to integrate payment processors on your website. 

Secured Transaction

Payment gateway service providers have encryption protocols and policies to save your customers’ data. Your transaction data form any fraud activity so that you can have secured transactions entirely.

Faster Transaction Process

You can integrate the online payment software into your website to make instant payments through a faster and verified process. 

Increased customer base

Online payment gateways allow people from all across the globe to make payments to access your products. It helps you grow your reach and customer base for your brand.

Anytime and Anywhere

As the online payment services are available all days of the years, the customers and clients make payment whenever and which device they want to, offering the fullest convenience.

Extra Tools

Most of the payment system providers are packed with shopping and other business operation tools that allow business owners to manage business transactions on their websites.

Stripe vs. Braintree: A Comparison

Stripe

Stripe is an American online payment processing software provider for various types of internet businesses. Stripe has a wide range of payment methods which allows your customer with different options and 

Payment

Stripe provides a fully integrated payment solution for an online marketplace, B2B platforms, eCommerce stores, etc. It covers all the payment methods allowing customers to a global audience.

Billing solution

Stripe is ideal for SaaS platforms regardless of B2B or B2C model, offering a complete service to create and set up a solution. A dashboard allows you to monitor and track the invoice processes for your billings. You can also get the data from your customers and their convenient ways of transactions.

Stripe Connect

Stripe offers a complete payment solution for diverse marketplaces like cab booking, food ordering & delivery and grocery delivery, etc. It helps you to manage the transactions effected through the routing mechanism for several business models. If you have more number of stakeholders operating the payment processing, Stripe Connect is a product that might be useful for you. 

Stripe Atlas

Stripe helps new startups to form a legal structure for their company. So you can save time without getting involved in the legal policies and loads of paper works. Stripe Atlas is a specified service for startups to get through the legal process quickly.

Stripe Radar

Stripe radar allows you to detect frauds and help them stop happening through its machine learning capability. Through many layers of authentication, these features will enable you to identify customers from fraudsters quickly.

Braintree 

Braintree is a payment gateway software for online merchandising and widely used among e-commerce companies. They acquired another popular payment gateway PayPal in 2013. 

Direct

It is an integrated payment gateway, the same as the stripes payment product. This can be integrated into a mobile app or website to implement safer and faster transactions without any hassle.

Marketplace

Braintree marketplace is similar to Stripe’s connect. The company renders payment solutions for all kinds of marketplace businesses. 

Braintree Extend

Braintree Extend lets you connect with the partners who are providing incentives and relevant services if you are planning to give cash backs or offers to your customers. This way, you can attract more customers based on your loyalty programs and cashback deals.

Braintree Auth

It is a service for merchant service providers to track and support the payment transaction. It allows you to store customer data and manage all the technical aspects efficiently. It takes authorized actions to make the payment successful. 

Stripe vs. Braintree: Top Features

Features of Stripe

• Open Source Plugin
• Mobile customer Interface
• Authorization
• Financial Reporting
• Consolidated Reports
• Accounting Integrations
• Unifies Payout
• Dispute Handling
• Invoice
• Clean Canvas
• Embeddable Checkout
• Custom UI Toolkit

Features of Braintree

• Drop-in UI
• Customized checkout workflow
• Advanced fraud protection
• Easy data migration
• Guaranteed uptime
• Encryption
• Braintree Vault
• Easy repeat billing
• Dynamic control panel
• 2-day payout option
• Extended Support
• Global Coverage

Payment Methods

It is crucial to know about the variety of payment methods to attract customers from all over the world. Both platforms provide significant payment methods. 

Stripe

It provides the business with a single payment API that allows them to accept payment from a variety of payment methods. Each country has given different payment methods, and it will be an added advantage of your business to grow on a global scale. 

Stripe accepts payment methods such as ACH credit transfers, ACH Debits, AliPay, Apple Pay, Google Pau, Cards, EPS, GiroPay, iDEAL, Bancontact, FPX, SOFORT, Wechat Pay, Sofort, SEPA Direct Debit, Multibanco, and Klarna.

Braintree

Braintree covers all the payment methods covered by Stripe. It includes payments covered through credit and debit cards, digital wallets, and local payment methods. Here are the payment methods that Braintree covers

ACH Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Paypal, Paypal Credit, UnionPay, Venmo, SRC, EPS, GiroPay, iDEAL, BanContact, MyBanck, SOFORT, and Prezelewy24. 

Currency & Country options

Stripe

Stripe covers almost every significant currency. If your business is well expanded around the world, Stripe is good to go, as it supports 135+ currencies and 39 countries, so you can quickly charge your customers in their local currency. The price is automatically converted to local currencies, making it easier for the customers to know what is being charged. 

Braintree

Braintree includes more than 130+ currencies and 44 countries to support your global-scale business. It offers an easy set up for companies to experience smooth and faster transactions. The multiple currency setup features on the website and mobile app will show the customer’s native currency depending on their location. 

Pricing Structure 

Both Stripe and Braintree charge on a pay as you go model. Stripe does not charge for set up fees, Minimum processing fees, statement fees, payment Gateways fees, PCI compliance fees, Refund fees, cancellations fees, or hidden fees. It only charges for every successful transaction. On the other hand, Braintree also does not charge for the setup, maintenance services, or cancellation fees.

Security Measures

Security and fraud prevention is a key priority of any online payment gateways. Hundreds and millions of transactions happen a day; there are high possibilities of data breaches when it comes to online payments. Companies should focus on taking security measures and comply with international standards of online payment processors.

Stripe follows strict security practices and tools for data security. The Stripe security is checked by PCI certified and approved payment gateway. It is recommended to use https connection and get an SSL certificate for the website to prevent fraud. On the other hand, Braintree also follows strict rules in level 1 PCI compliant, which makes you no worry about the security breach of the data. Every transaction s secured by TSL.

Integrations

Integrating a payment gateway is something you’ll need technical expertise to help you set it up on your website. Developers should facilitate the payment integration with all the necessary API reference, Server libraries, and chat support.

Stripe comes with pre-built integrations with several tools, products, and extensions like business cloud, Zoho books, and many more. Braintree can be integrated with a wide range of business systems and applications like WooCommerce, Yodle, Magento, Oracle E-Business Suite, and more.

Conclusion 

We have covered some of the vital aspects that aim to bring out a comparison between Stripe vs Braintree from a business perspective. There other technical issues for which you’ll need to hire developers for integration.

If you want to grow your online business on a global scale or plan to digitize your existing business, you’ll need to add online payments to experienced secured and faster transactions.

Stripe has more products and services when comparing to Braintree. Even though Braintree has fewer products, in terms of pricing, Braintree is suitable for startups. By the end, it depends on your business requirements. Both platforms are offering optimal advantages. 

You can build a customized payment gateway as per your business’s needs to save the operational cost. Get in touch with the team to know more about building and integrating online payments.