Comparing Stripe vs. Braintree

Choosing your payment processor marks a major milestone when setting up your payment infrastructure. The Stripe and Braintree platforms both offer powerful payment processing capabilities that can streamline your payments and optimize revenue. 

Comparing the two requires examining not only each platform’s features but also its unique advantages and business philosophies. 

Who is Stripe?

Founded in 2010, Stripe is a leading provider of payment processing services around the globe, with dual headquarters in South San Francisco and Dublin. The company describes its platform product as a fully integrated suite of financial and payment products, offering a comprehensive financial infrastructure. 

In the Worldwide Retail Online Payment Platform Software Providers 2024 Vendor Assessment, the IDC MarketScape names the platform as a leading provider offering “broad functionality in a full-stack platform.” 

Who is Braintree? 

Braintree, on the other hand, markets itself as an all-in-one solution for online payments. Although PayPal first acquired and labeled Braintree a PayPal service in 2013, Braintree only recently underwent an official name change, now branded as “PayPal Braintree.”  

PayPal describes Braintree as its “end-to-end enterprise payments platform.”

The Distinct Company Philosophies & Sales Approach

Aside from differing features, Stripe and Braintree also differ in their sales philosophies and target audiences. While Stripe focuses on the simplification of payments around the globe for all industries, Braintree places greater emphasis on enterprise payments. 

Stripe offers critical payment support for many different business types and industries, including: 

• Startups
• Enterprises
• E-commerce
• Marketplaces

Additionally, Stripe offers a broader range of services and solutions, such as embedded payments and finance automation, while Braintree is explicitly designed as PayPal’s solution for payment processing. 

Side-by-Side Platform Comparison: Stripe vs. PayPal Braintree

No payment platform assessment is complete without comparing the competing platforms. Stripe and Braintree both offer customers comprehensive features for optimizing payments, yet the platforms remain distinct.

Let’s compare what each platform has to offer: 

Stripe’s Complete Payments Platform

Users can enable 50 different payment methods via Stripe, including both traditional payments like debit and credit cards, as well as:

• Digital wallets
• Bank debits
• Bank transfers
• Cash-based vouchers
• Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) 

Stripe has many essential platform capabilities for optimizing customer payment interfaces, including hosted payment pages, embeddable UI toolkits, API-only interfaces, in-person payments, payment links, invoicing, mobile payments, and third-party integrations. Users enjoy exceptional customization freedom, allowing each business to tailor the platform to their unique needs. 

Additional platform features include payment processing, settlements, reconciliation, and financial management services. With Stripe, you can choose from hundreds of third-party and pre-built integrations to build a comprehensive financial infrastructure.

Based in both North America and Europe, this platform has expansive global coverage and is available in 46 countries as of August 2024. Stripe actively works to increase its global accessibility and prioritizes localized customer service to better serve customers located within specific regions outside of its main North American and European demographics. As a leader in the payments industry, Stripe is constantly working to add new payment methods to match changing consumer demands, as well as new technologies that further simplify cross-border transactions and currency conversions.  

Stripe’s standard pricing gives users complete access to the payments platform and includes a pay-as-you-go model. The cost for domestic cards is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge with no setup fees, monthly fees, or hidden fees. Stripe also offers a custom pricing model designed for businesses with large payment volumes. The custom pricing model varies depending on the specific needs of each company and includes: 

• Volume discounts
• Multi-product discounts
• Country-specific rates
• IC+ pricing

Braintree’s End-to-End Enterprise Payments Platform

Like Stripe, Braintree offers a wide range of payment methods that users can enable. Along with credit and debit cards, Braintree also gives users access to:

• Bank directs
• ACH direct banking
• Digital wallets (such as Apple Pay)

Unlike Stripe, which offers an expansive suite of solutions for establishing an entire payment infrastructure, Braintree’s simpler platform design centers around payment processing alone. 

The core features offered on the Braintree platform include:

• Seamless checkouts
• Drop-in UI
• Fraud protection
• Data security 

Headquartered in Chicago, Braintree is currently available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and New Zealand. To access the platform, all Braintree customers must operate directly out of one of these countries and must also have a bank account with one of the listed country’s chartered banks. 

Braintree’s pricing model varies depending on the payment method used. 

The pricing model for cards and third-party digital wallets is 2.59% + $.49 per transaction, with additional fees for specific payment scenarios (i.e., an additional 1% fee is applied to transactions in non-U.S. currencies). For Venmo payments, the pricing model is 3.49% + $.49 per transaction. ACH Direct Debits are priced at 0.75% per transaction, while PayPal pricing varies according to the specific fees and terms applicable to each PayPal account. 

Who’s PCI Compliant?

Both Stripe and Braintree meet the highest standards of PCI compliance, which is essential for businesses that handle payment information securely.

Stripe’s PCI Compliance

Stripe is a PCI Level 1 Service Provider, the highest level of certification under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). It offers features such as tokenization and encryption, which minimize merchants' need to handle sensitive data. By using Stripe, businesses can reduce their PCI scope and rely on the platform's comprehensive security infrastructure.

Braintree’s PCI Compliance

Braintree, also a PCI Level 1 Service Provider, offers robust data security measures, including the Braintree Vault, where sensitive payment data is encrypted and securely stored. With no raw card data storage and end-to-end encryption, Braintree simplifies PCI compliance for merchants by reducing their exposure to security risks.

Integrate & Test Multiple Payment Processors with Spreedly

Spreedly’s Open Payments Platform gives you the freedom to integrate with the right mix of payment service providers for your business including Stripe and Braintree. Ease of integration not only frees up resources, it also gives you the power to experiment and test different payment processors, gateways, service providers, and other tools within a single secure environment. Mastering your connectivity and mix of providers powers your payment performance. 

Spreedly can enable all the payment methods you need and how many payment processors are necessary to reach your expansion goals. Spreedly offers intelligent payment routing to ensure your payments are optimized to increase authorization and reduce payment failures. 

With Spreedly, you can capture and secure payment methods in our Advanced Vault, automatically updating stored information to keep your payment data evergreen. 

Request a Spreedly demo today to get started.

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