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 At A Glance

Square and Stripe take a similar approach to credit card processing: Both are third-party processors or payment service providers (PSPs). Rather than giving each business its own merchant account, all merchants’ payment processing is aggregated into large, communal accounts. As PSPs, they assume the risk associated with maintaining the accounts.

The advantage of this is that you, as a business owner, can sign up and 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 that neither Stripe nor Square can accept high-risk businesses.

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 under the hood with the code 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. Square conveniently divided its software into categories pertaining to various industries, such as Square for Restaurants and 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

In terms of fees, Stripe and Square are both incredibly transparent. Both companies process online transactions at 2.9% + $0.30 with no monthly fees. Additional charges may apply for merchants who opt into either company’s premium products. However, both Square and Stripe readily disclose these costs.

Overall, both companies are close enough in pricing that it’s not easy to say which offers a better value. And 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 customers one free magstripe mobile reader.

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.

Check out our complete Square pricing guide for more on Square’s fees.

Key Differences Between Stripe & Square

The key difference between Stripe and Square is each system’s overall capabilities: Square offers a seamless experience for merchants who want to sell in person and online, while Stripe focuses on extensive ecommerce capabilities, from international payments to subscriptions and recurring payments.

However, in many areas, the company’s services do still overlap. Both have a wide array of ready-made integrations, powerful invoicing tools, and developer toolkits for customization.

Both Square & Stripe Offer…

Stripe Payments Also Includes…

Square Payments Also Includes…

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.

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…

Choose Stripe If…

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