What does Stripe do
Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform that helps businesses accept payments online and in person, run billing, and manage their financial operations over the internet.
Its core functions cover the basics of taking money from customers:
- Payment processing: Stripe works as both a payment gateway and a payment processor, so businesses can securely accept credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets such as Apple Pay.
- Global transactions: Stripe supports dozens of countries and more than 135 currencies, with currency conversion handled automatically.
- Developer tools: Stripe provides APIs that developers can build into websites and mobile apps to add payments.
Businesses weighing Stripe vs PayPal international payments usually look at these core functions first, then at the extra services each platform adds. Stripe's additional services include:
- Subscriptions: Stripe handles recurring billing and invoicing for SaaS products and membership models.
- Fraud prevention: Stripe Radar uses machine learning to detect and block fraudulent transactions.
- Marketplaces: Stripe Connect lets platforms split a payment between multiple vendors or service providers.
- In-person sales: Stripe Terminal is hardware that connects physical card readers to a business's online Stripe account.
Stripe, Inc. is an American financial services and software as a service company, and its products are aimed at internet businesses that need to bill customers and process payments.