The Complete Guide To Stripe Pricing And Costs

Are you curious about what makes Stripe different than other third-party processors like Square and PayPal? And if the costs are comparable? Come along as we explore Stripe — a lesser-known payment processing option that has definite potential when it comes to eCommerce.

Even though Stripe has less name recognition than competitors Square and PayPal, Stripe has likely processed many of your recent online shopping transactions without you even realizing it. That’s because Stripe powers payment processing behind the scenes for some of the biggest retail chains around — places like Target, Lyft, Facebook, Adidas, and Under Armour. Yes, Stripe has one of the most respected and well-trusted platforms in the world, but instead of providing branded, customer-facing tools like its peers, it focuses on delivering developer-friendly solutions with extensive code libraries and lots of customization options.

If you are looking for a ready-made, polished solution for eCommerce payment processing, Stripe may not be the ideal choice. A solution like Square may be much better suited to your needs. If, however, you want to build your payment processing platform from the ground up (and have the technical resources to do so), you’ll find a range of robust, world-class developer tools.

In this post, we’ll talk about what kind of payment processing Stripe provides (and why it matters), and then dive into costs associated with transactions and/or other handy tools you may need.

Overview Of Stripe

Stripe is a third-party payment processor — just like PayPal and Square. Traditional merchant account providers vet and approve each individual merchant, creating a single account for that business. Third-party processors, on the other hand, make it much easier for a business to quickly access payment processing services because they combine many business accounts together into one giant account. Stripe’s processing model relies on maintaining account volume to reduce risk for the group as a whole; for that reason, it can become a bit of a numbers game for them to remain profitable. If something looks fishy, they are more likely to terminate, freeze, or put an account hold on a business without a lot of warning.

Now, most of us feel a bit squirmy when we imagine our hard-earned revenue potentially held ransom in a purgatory account, but the truth is, freezes and holds happen only to a tiny percentage of businesses — and typically only after certain red flags have been raised. If you want to learn more about how to avoid waving some of these red flags, check out our post: How to Avoid Merchant Account Holds, Freezes, and Terminations. The majority of business owners will not have to worry about a freeze or hold, so it’s important to keep that whole issue in perspective.

Now back to the good news. Stripe has a lot of features and benefits for a growing small business, such as:

• Transparent pricing
• No monthly or termination fee
• Payment security using advanced machine learning  
• Libraries in every language
• Display multiple currencies (add 1% for automatic conversion)
• Versioned API changes
• Test-friendly environment
• 24/7 live chat and phone support
• iOS and Android dashboard apps

And when it comes to creating the finished solution, you don’t have to do it all. There is a workaround for those of us who may not have all of the coding skills (or time!) to build it all from the ground up. Stripe has established platform partners to integrate a range of small business tools from accounting, automation, form building, CRM, inventory management, and booking — just to scratch the surface.

One thing we like about Stripe is that, unlike some companies, Stripe offers support for safe and PCI compliant migration of credit card data whether you are coming or going. Some third-party processors don’t support exit migration at all, so this is a nice touch.

Now that you are a bit more familiar with this platform, let’s check out the costs associated with processing payments.

Stripe Payment Processing Costs

Most savvy business owners want to cut to the chase. “Great, so how much does it cost?”

Stripe’s payment processing costs are straightforward, but your per-transaction costs will largely depend on the type of transaction you’re processing. Discounts and some pricing differences apply, so stick with me as we go through some different scenarios.

Online Transactions

For any eCommerce transaction (including in-app and mobile web payments), you are going to pay 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge. It doesn’t matter whether you process Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, etc. — all cards cost the same to process. You also pay the same price whether you build your own site or connect to a third-party shopping cart.

Another great thing about Stripe is that you can accept international cards (for an additional 1%). If you need to convert the currency, however, you’ll have to pay another 1% on top of that. This is great for businesses that sell internationally, especially combined with Stripe’s ability to present prices in the customer’s local currency. 

Stripe also allows merchants to accept more than just credit cards, providing the tools that allow you to manage ACH and other payment options. Here is what it’s going to cost you:

• ACH Credit: Starting at $1.00 per ACH credit payment
• ACH Direct Debit: 0.8% per transaction, capped at $5
• Wire: $8.00 per wire payment

Stripe also allows you to verify your customers’ bank accounts at no extra charge. That’s a nice touch. However, if payment doesn’t go through, you are looking at $4 for failed ACH direct deposit payments and $15 for disputed ACH direct debit payments.

In-Person Transactions

Want the same customization for your pop-up shop or brick-and-mortar store that Stripe brings to your online presence? Introducing the Stripe Terminal!

For in-person payment processing with the Square terminal, you’ll pay 2.7% + $0.05 for each successful card transaction. But before you get too excited, Stripe Terminal’s programmable point of sale is currently in beta and available upon invitation only. You can request approval now, and if you are approved, you can buy a developer kit to run in test mode until they begin supporting transactions in live mode (this is expected to roll out very soon).

When it comes time to choose your reader, you can integrate with the Stripe Terminal through a combination of an iOS SDK and mobile reader or a JavaScript SDK and countertop reader. Stripe suggests the latter if you’re looking for a fully branded experience and have a strong developer proficiency.

Payment Security Note: As far as payment security and PCI-DSS compliance go, the Stripe Terminal is EMV Levels 1,2, and 3 pre-certified. So it can help a wide range of businesses get started without having to dedicate extra resources to payment security. But for now, you’ll have to wait to process live payments until it graduates from beta testing.

Does Stripe Offer Alternative Pricing?

We do get a lot of comments about the fact that Stripe (and other third-party processors) can be expensive for some businesses. Fortunately, Stripe does offer volume-based discounts for large businesses. In addition, you may be able to qualify for custom pricing if you run a nonprofit or have a unique business model. Stripe doesn’t give any hard and fast details about alternative pricing, however, so you’ll have to contact the sales team and discuss your business model with them directly.

Does your business process very small transactions ($10 or less) on a regular basis? The $0.30 per-transaction fee might be prohibitively expensive, and an alternate payment model catering to these microtransactions can save you money. Here’s what Stripe says about support for microtransaction payment processing:

Microtransaction support varies from market to market. If you process more than $100,000 per month or have a unique business model such as marketplaces, microtransactions, or unusually large order values, reach out to us, and we can discuss availability and options. In markets where microtransactions aren’t available, a common approach is to batch together multiple transactions from the same customer and submit them as a single, larger charge.

Stripe Pricing For Other Tools

Stipe offers a healthy selection of additional tools and add-ons. Below, we break them down for you and include information about pricing to help you make an informed decision.

Billing

Stripe Billing offers recurring payments and subscription tools built around the customer experience. For the recurring business model, you will have a lot of tools to help you engage customers and reduce turnover (more on that below). And as far as billing your customers with one-off invoices or setting them up for automatic recurring payments, there are no limits on how many invoices you can send, ever.

To be clear, all Stripe Billing fees are charged in addition to the processing fee (2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge).

If you’re only expecting to process a small volume of recurring payments, or you’re new to Stripe, the Starter Plan has everything you need. Your cost for using the Billing tools is 0% for the first $1 million of recurring charges, and then 0.4% after that. Stripe doesn’t charge anything extra for one-off invoices. 

For businesses that are billing at large volumes and want advanced features to manage billing from order cash, Stripe offers the Scale plan. You will pay 0.7% on recurring charges, in addition to the payment fees of 2.9% + 30 cents per successful charge to a card. However, Stripe also offers discounted ACH to businesses on the Scale plan, so there are potential cost savings.

Here is a screenshot from Stripe’s comparison of their Starter and Scale packages:

The above is a long list of out-of-the-box tools you can put to use pretty quickly. Even just the business analytics, reporting, recovery tools, and webhooks make a compelling case of high value to cost ratio. Stripe touts that its recovery tools have “reduced payment declines for users by 45% on average and increased revenue by 10% on average.”

All-in-all, any SaaS or subscription-based business could benefit from the features in Stripe Billing — and Stripe offers a free trial with no setup or fixed monthly fees, so there doesn’t seem to be a downside to trying it out.

Connect

Connect is “the payments platform for platforms.” If you are a marketplace or a platform, you can utilize Stripe Connect to accept money and pay third parties. Connect is API-first, meaning you have the freedom to design a unique experience including onboarding, set payout timing, and integrated financial reporting, to name a few.

Connect has three account options including Standard, Express, and Custom. The cost for Connect Standard is included with Stripe — you have no additional platform-specific fees to add payments to your platform. Additionally, you’ll get a full Stripe Dashboard, dynamic risk-based KYC/AML checks, international support in over 25 countries, and hosted onboarding and verification.

Custom and Express Connect costs $2 per active account per month + 0.25% of account volume. With these accounts you can do things like build branded onboarding flows, control payout timing and funds flow, automate 1099 tax form generation and delivery, and have a platform management dashboard. The difference between Express and Custom is revealed in the names themselves. Express is a faster option requiring low integration effort to onboard recipients quickly and at scale (e.g., an on-demand marketplace), while Custom is an option for platforms to completely customize the user experience.

International connected accounts will run an extra 0.25% cross-border charge on monthly account volume. Additional fees also apply if you utilize Connect tools such as account debits (1.5%) and payouts ($0.25 per payout). However, as with Stripe’s other pricing models, the company is always up for discussing volume pricing for large platforms and alternative pricing options for low volume accounts. And if you’re a startup affiliated with Stripe Atlas Network, you can contact Stripe to learn about their custom startup package.

Sigma

Sigma connects you to your business data with a wide range of applications from business operations to finance, data analysis, and product management. Sigma doesn’t require any setup or ETLs; all you need to do is write SQL queries to create the custom reports on your dashboard. Pricing for Sigma is based on how many charges, authorizations, and application fees your business processed in the previous month. Fees start at $0.02/charge for 1-500 charges and incrementally decrease with charge volume.  

Radar For Teams

While all of Stripe’s payment processing software is fully PCI compliant and therefore meets global payment security standards, Radar is available as well. Radar bolsters your defenses through advanced machine learning. Radar learns from “hundreds of billions of data points across the Stripe network to help millions of businesses fight fraud.”

Radar is included with your standard and custom pricing plans. However, Radar for Fraud Teams is also available for an additional cost of $0.02/per transaction. Radar utilizes data and tools that support the detection and blocking of fraud, and it can decrease the false positives that block legitimate customers, too. Stripe has done a very good job at creating layers of security and data insights into their product — and you don’t need to dig into the code to make use of it because it all happens at your dashboard!

Is Stripe A Good Fit For You?

It’s pretty clear that Stripe goes far beyond your run-of-the-mill payment processing solution. The real meat of Stripe is its rich developer tools that give you the power to customize everything about the payment experience while giving you deep insights and analytical data you can use right away.

Businesses that want a fully branded, ready-to-scale solution — as well as subscription-based businesses, marketplaces, and tech-focused companies — will likely find all the tools they need and then some. However, for the eCommerce business that simply needs a reliable and secure payment processor, Stripe may be overkill. If you don’t have the technical expertise or don’t have developers on staff, you may never tap into Stripe’s potential. An option like Square may be a better fit. Square offers fast setup, no recurring fees, and up-front pricing that suits most small businesses nicely. Additionally, Square provides an extensive dashboard that reveals basic business and financial analytics with no integration required.

Not sure what you need? Check out our Stripe vs Square comparison or read our Stripe Review for an in-depth analysis. Or if you want to explore your options even further, check out How to Choose an eCommerce Merchant Account.