Stripe

Who Stripe is for

Stripe is built for businesses that sell online. If you run an ecommerce store, SaaS product, marketplace, or subscription business, Stripe’s API and integration ecosystem is the best in the industry. Payment links, subscription billing, marketplace payouts, invoicing, and 135+ currencies all work out of the box. The documentation is so good it has become the industry benchmark.

Stripe also works for businesses that need in-person payments through Stripe Terminal, but that is clearly a secondary product. If you primarily sell face-to-face, Square or a dedicated POS processor will serve you better.

The best platform, the worst safety net

Stripe’s developer tools are genuinely unmatched. No other processor offers the API quality, documentation depth, or integration breadth that Stripe does. For building payment flows, Stripe is the gold standard. That part is not marketing. It is the consensus of millions of developers.

The problem is what happens when something goes wrong. Stripe’s account hold and fund freeze practices are well-documented and severe. Users report funds frozen for 90 to 180+ days, sometimes longer. Six-figure balances held with email-only communication and no clear resolution timeline. Stripe’s Trustpilot rating sits between 1.9 and 2.8 out of 5, with 42% of reviews being one star. G2, where the audience skews technical, rates Stripe 4.0/5.

The pattern is consistent: businesses flagged for chargebacks, sudden volume spikes, or “high-risk” categories can have their entire balance frozen with minimal communication. Unlike Square (where holds are usually days to weeks), Stripe holds can extend for months. If your business depends on consistent cash flow, this is a risk you need to account for.

The pricing math

Stripe’s flat-rate pricing is straightforward but expensive at scale. Here is how online processing costs compare:

At $5,000/month in online sales, the $25/month difference is small enough that Stripe’s superior features may justify it. At $20,000/month, you are overpaying roughly $130/month. At $50,000/month, the gap is $400/month ($4,800/year). Custom pricing from Stripe is available if you process over $250K/year, but you have to negotiate for it.

For in-person payments specifically, Stripe’s 2.7% + $0.05 is actually more competitive than Square’s 2.6% + $0.15 on smaller transactions (under $20 average ticket). Above that, they are nearly equivalent.

Bottom line

Stripe is the best payment platform for online businesses. The API, documentation, and feature depth are unmatched. If you are building something custom, need subscription billing, or operate a marketplace, there is no better technical foundation.

But “best platform” and “best deal” are different things. If you process over $20,000/month, the flat-rate pricing is leaving money on the table. And if Stripe ever flags your account, the fund-hold experience is documented as worse than any other major processor. Keep a backup processor configured and never run 100% of your volume through a single aggregator. A statement audit can show you exactly what you would save by moving high-volume processing to an interchange-plus provider while keeping Stripe for its technical capabilities.