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Stripe vs TransferWise: What are the differences?
What is Stripe? Payments for developers. Stripe makes it easy for developers to accept credit cards on the web.
What is TransferWise? An online account that lets you send money, get paid, and spend money internationally. It bypasses pricey international payments entirely by using two local transfers instead of one international transaction. If you want to convert your pounds to euros, you send the money in pounds to its UK-based account.
Stripe and TransferWise can be primarily classified as "Payment Services" tools.
Some of the features offered by Stripe are:
- Full-stack payments- You don’t need a merchant account or gateway. Stripe handles everything, including storing cards, subscriptions, and direct payouts to your bank account. Stripe.js lets you build your own payment forms while still avoiding PCI requirements.
- An API that gets out of your way- It’s so easy, we’ve embedded a bunch of examples right here. Copy some of these requests into your terminal and check out what happens. With wrappers in Ruby, PHP, Python and more, you can get started in minutes.
- Pricing like it should be- 2.9% + 30 cents per successful charge. No setup fees, no monthly fees, no card storage fees, no hidden costs: you only get charged when you earn money.
On the other hand, TransferWise provides the following key features:
- Invite friends to TransferWise
- Send us verification documents
- Set up Amount Lock transfers on available currency routes
We use GoCardless to simplify the way clients and partners pay for our services. What intrigued us is the quick and easy ACH feature that gives our clients the option to log in with their bank account and shoot the funds directly to our account. The fee, compared to Stripe is less. Stripe and PayPal charge 2.9% + 30c and Stripe also forces the client to enter in all of their payment details manually and then if the payment doesn't work, the client has to try all over again. GoCardless charges 1% + 25c which is much more reasonable dealing with the large projects that we are currently working on.
We integrate GoCardless with Xero to easily send out quick invoices, receive the funds and track all revenue in one place.
With COVID-19 looming over us, businesses are, more than ever, looking for ways to set up online payments.
And having recently gone through implementing both Stripe and GoCardless to get monthly subscriptions set up and automated on my company website, I felt there was no better time to write this blog post!
If you're currently looking at working with a Payment Gateway provider API, or you're currently working with one but are not a fan, are looking to automate things a bit more, or are just generally thinking about changing, then you should have a read of my latest blog post where I compare Stripe and GoCardless.
I compare APIs in depth, specifically the subscription checkout flow that both offer (they're very similar, with some BIG differences).
There are plenty of code examples on how to set it up in a Node.js environment and right at the end, I rate each API based on the following factors:
- API ease of use
- API documentation
- Payment pages
- Costs / fees
- Security
- Developer appeal
- Customer experience
- Free Trial
So feel free to check it out, and I hope you like it. Please leave any feedback as it is very helpful. Thanks!
Stripe was made with developers in mind first so the extensibility of it is great! This makes it very easy for us to integrate and automate as much as we need with its APIs and SDK. It allows a lot of customization of exactly what we need to build our applications. They also manage all of our customers from a tax and accounting perspective which makes it easy from a business standpoint.
Pros of Stripe
- Easy setup301
- Developer friendly292
- Well-designed api248
- Great documentation191
- Clear pricing169
- Secure75
- Reliable74
- Full integration with webhooks63
- Amazing api43
- Great customer support38
- Easy11
- Credit cards never hit your server - no pci worries6
- Recurring billing5
- No merchant account/gateway required4
- Easy to integrate3
- Support for SCA (Strong Customer Authentication)2
- BitCoin2
- Great app2
- Fast UI2
- Payments without own backend (using Stripe Products)1
- Connect1
- Checkout.js1
- Great UI1
- So easy to use1
- Beautiful1
Pros of TransferWise
- Best exchange rates4
- Fast3
- API Support2
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Cons of Stripe
- Connect4
- CANNOT withdraw USD to a Canadian Bank Account2
- Does NOT have a currency conversion option like Paypal2
- They keep 25% of the income for 60 days2
Cons of TransferWise
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What is Stripe?
What is TransferWise?
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