Stripe VS Square: Features, Cost, & Key Differences For Small Business

Comparing Stripe vs. Square requires taking in a lot of information. In the process, you’ll learn that Stripe Payments and Square are both great tools for small businesses, and we’re here to help you decide whether Stripe versus Square is better for you.

Trying to choose between Stripe and Square is difficult, especially if you want to sell online. Our Stripe vs. Square analysis takes an in-depth look at both companies, their pricing, features, and the types of businesses that can benefit from each of their services. For example, Stripe offers tools for customized checkouts and control over the experience. Square offers users an easy-to-launch free website with powerful online ecommerce tools.

Stripe VS Square: Core Features

Despite their similar approaches to credit card processing, Square’s core features are designed around in-person point-of-sale (POS) transactions. Stripe’s features are primarily oriented around eCommerce.

Both companies are third-party processors, which means that rather than giving each business its own merchant accounts, businesses are aggregated in common accounts from which fees are deducted. The advantage to this is that you can start accepting credit cards more quickly than you could with a merchant account. Unfortunately, it also makes troubleshooting anything going on with your account more difficult, which can result in more frequent account holds and freezes. It also means high-risk industries are a poor fit for both companies.

With both Stripe and Square you’ll get:

• Support for credit card payments
• Support for ACH payments
• Recurring billing
• Pre-built and customizable checkouts
• eCommerce integrations
• Billing and invoices
• Developer tools
• Potential access to loans

Stripe Payments Also Includes…

• Dynamic currency displays and multicurrency processing support
• Support for local payment methods outside of the US
• Advanced customization options
• Advanced security options

Square Payments Also Includes…

• Numerous affordable hardware options
• Powerful inventory and customer management tools
• Scheduling and HR tools
• Industry-specific software options

Benefits Of Stripe

Stripe is geared first and foremost toward the developers who will implement its toolset into their company’s payments processes or their own eCommerce service. You don’t need to be a programming genius to use Stripe, but having someone on your team who can play with its code under the hood is important if you want to get the most out of it.

The ideal Stripe customer primarily does business online and internationally.

Benefits Of Square

Square is all about accessibility and convenience, particularly where new small businesses are concerned. Software is conveniently divided into categories pertaining to industries, like Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail. Square started with a focus on point of sale (POS) transactions, but Square’s eCommerce offerings should be more than adequate for brick-and-mortar businesses that also make online sales. While Square does have respectable developer support, developers aren’t the target audience the way they are for Stripe.

Stripe VS Square: Fees, Rates, & Pricing

Stripe and Square are both beacons of transparency in a notoriously shady industry. You might run into some questions about how or when a fee is applied, but overall both companies disclose just about everything:

Overall, both companies are close enough in pricing that it’s not easy to say which offers a better value. 2.9% + $0.30 is more or less the industry rate for flat-rate online transactions.

For in-person transactions, Stripe is cheaper for transactions under $50 and Square for transactions over $50. Just remember that Stripe’s POS infrastructure is very limited. Hardware is similarly priced where the two companies overlap, the main difference being that Square offers one free magstripe mobile reader to customers.

Stripe comes out ahead on ACH payments, and will probably be a slightly better value if you do a lot of recurring billing. On the other hand, Square’s lack of chargeback fees and completely free refunds can add up to a lot of savings over time.

You can read more about Stripe’s fee structure in our complete guide to Stripe pricing.

For more on Square’s fees, check out our complete Square pricing guide.

Key Differences Between Stripe & Square

The main difference between Stripe and Square is that Square is primarily focused on in-person transactions while Stripe is primarily focused on online transactions.

That said, this is less true of both companies than it has been in the past. Square’s online services, while not as extensive as Stripe’s, are quite good and getting better. Likewise, Stripe Terminal is evolving from a curiosity to a decent tool for in-person transactions.

Some other key differences include:

Target Customers

Both Stripe and Square target smaller businesses looking for broad, platform-based solutions, but ultimately their strategies take opposite forms. Stripe primarily targets eCommerce businesses and provides nominal support for POS if desired. Square primarily targets brick and mortar business transactions but makes it easy for businesses to dabble in eCommerce. Stripe and Square have similarly pricing for eCommerce, but Square is typically cheaper for in-person transactions.

Customizability

Square has come a long way in developing its toolsets for programmers, but Stripe is at or close to the top of the list when it comes to do-it-yourself customizations.

Premium Pricing

Both Square and Stripe take a modular approach to advanced features, allowing you to add premium features to your base month-to-month accounts. Square breaks its advanced features into packages that you pay for with a monthly fee. Stripe, on the other hand, typically charges an additional percentage per transaction for its advanced features. There’s no clear winner here: you’ll need to consider your transaction volume and needs.

Supported Countries

Square can take credit cards through the Square app in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia. Stripe is available in 40 countries, with four more available by invitation. Both Stripe and Square support different payment methods depending on the country, but Stripe supports considerably more overall. Square does not currently allow you to charge your customer in different currencies; to do so you’d need to open a separate account. Stripe supports currency conversion as well as the ability to route different currencies to different accounts if you want to avoid conversion charges.

Comparing Square & Stripe Features

In broad strokes, Stripe and Square have a lot of similar features, but the depth and implementation of these features can vary quite a bit.

Square offers suites of tools that it packages by industry. This can make it easy for businesses that aren’t very familiar with payment processing to select a package that should be oriented to their needs. On the other hand, Stripe’s tools are more like layers users can pile on to add additional functionality to their base credit card processing services. Stripe’s approach is more geared toward businesses that know exactly what they want, whereas Square’s is friendly to businesses that may be figuring that out as they go.

And while there is a lot of overlap between features, it should be stated that Square has more depth when it comes to managing the offline goings-on of your business. Stripe, on the other hand, has more depth when it comes to fine-tuning your online transactions and billing.

Customer Service & Support

It wasn’t always the case, but Square and Stripe have similar avenues of contact for customer support. After years of lagging behind, Stripe actually may be easier to reach by phone: Stripe’s phone service is 24/7 while Square’s is limited to business hours. This doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of that service, however, and both companies receive similar complaints regarding account freezes and holds.

In addition to the contact methods above, Stripe now offers large businesses premium support packages starting at $1,800/month.

User Reviews, Complaints & Criticisms

No service is perfect, and both Square and Stripe get their fair share of negative user reviews. As far as complaints go, the single biggest issue for both Square and Stripe is a common one: Account Holds & Terminations.

This is unsurprising (understatement of the year, right there) because it’s a common issue with any third-party processor. Because these payment systems are usually open to almost anyone right away and they are all lumped into one large merchant account, there’s a greater risk that some of those accounts will be terminated for risky behavior.

Square Complaints & Common Problems

Some common complaints specific to Square include:

• Lack Of Advanced Features: It’s not that Square doesn’t have enough features or that it’s missing anything important, but customers frequently want to see more depth in those features. Square is always balancing accessibility with depth.
• Fees: For a long time, Square was a great deal for small businesses that conducted a lot of small, in-person transactions. The 2.75% flat pricing meant that the cost of your transaction always scaled with your sale. That’s gone now, with Square using a more typical percent-plus model (2.6% + $0.10). While there’s nothing sinister about this — it more accurately reflects the costs involved — it has affected a lot of Square’s customers.

Stripe Complaints & Common Problems

Here are some Stripe-specific issues customers sometimes complain about:

• Lack Of Fraud Protection: I want to be clear: Stripe does have fraud management tools and a system to help merchants fight chargebacks. But I have seen complaints from merchants who don’t think these are adequate. Chargebacks are not settled by Stripe, so there’s not much the company can do beyond passing the requested documents on. But for fraud prevention, merchants need to make sure they have the appropriate tools enabled.
• Scaling: Some merchants have said they don’t feel like Stripe scales well with a growing business. This has a lot to do with Stripe’s fee structure, where advanced features can end up raising the cost of transactions significantly.

Stripe Or Square: Which Is Best For Me?

If you’ve made it this far, you probably have a decent idea of each company’s strengths and weaknesses. If you skipped ahead, or if you’re looking for a neat and tidy summary, you came to the right place.

Choose Square If…

• You Run A Brick-And-Mortar Business: If you only do some of your business online, you’ll likely benefit more from Square’s POS infrastructure, software, and hardware.
• You Want An Easy-To-Use Solution: Not a developer? Don’t know any developers? Don’t want to know any developers? Square is designed to get you up and running quickly, with access to popular integrations as well.
• You Want Productivity & Management Support: Square offers a lot of tools to help you manage your company and your customer base.

Choose Stripe If…

• Your Business Does International eCommerce: Stripe’s support for multiple currencies and payment methods makes it a better choice for companies doing business globally.
• Your Business Is Completely Or Mostly Online: While you can use Stripe for POS, that’s not where it shines. Its ecosystem is optimized for online transactions.
• You Have An In-House Developer: Stripe is made with developers foremost in mind. Whereas this can sometimes make it inconvenient for laypeople, a programmer or two should be able to get it up and running with little effort thanks to Stripe’s extensive documentation and tutorials.

Frequently Asked Questions About Square & Stripe

Square VS Stripe: The Final Verdict

Stripe and Square have some very important core similarities: They’re both third-party processors with an assortment of tools that allow merchants to sell online. Neither one is suited to high-risk industries, and there’s a lengthy list of businesses neither company can work with. But despite that, both Stripe and Square offer tools that cater to a huge assortment of industries.

They’ll both grow with your business, making it easy to scale up. But despite their similarities in terms of business model, it’s also pretty clear that what each company does best is completely different.

Square is a spectacular all-in-one processor, with a ready-made solution. You can sell in a store, on the go, and online — and get all of your information and payments, and orders collected in one simple, intuitive dashboard. There’s a vast array of add-on products that allow you to consolidate a host of business functions under one name, and they’re guaranteed to work together perfectly.

If you have limited technical knowledge, Square is going to be much easier to get started with and navigate through the different features.

Stripe focuses on internet payments (both on the web and in-app), but its tools make it possible for businesses to cater to customers all over the globe. The international appeal — from the local currency displays to the sheer breadth of payment methods accepted — makes it clear that Stripe is already a global player. Not only that, but with Stripe’s APIs and documentation, a savvy developer could create all kinds of payment customizations for a business.

Business owners who don’t have a developer on staff and who don’t have a lot of technical knowledge themselves may initially struggle with understanding how to use Stripe, especially if they want to do more than integrate it with some sort of shopping cart software.

Want to see how these services stack up against the biggest third-party processor in the game? Check out:

• Square VS PayPal For Small Business: Which Is Better?
• Stripe VS PayPal: How To Choose The Right Payment Processor For Your Online Business