Stripe vs Braintree: What’s the best payment gateway? 

Whether you are building an app to offer your goods or services or designing a beautiful selling website, you’ll have to consider implementation of the payment gateway. After all, the main purpose of the digital solutions is to boost your business and increase your income. All app and website users prefer seamless experience and they are likely to spend money on something if the payment procedure does not include any complicated steps. That is why it is crucial to think about a relevant payment gateway beforehand. 

You’ve probably heard about such popular payment methods as Amazon Payments, PayPal, WePay, Stripe and Braintree. We will not discuss all of them in this article, and we rather stop and provide details about the latest two. So let’s discover what makes Stripe and Braintree so good, how they differ, how to integrate them into your solution, and whether they are really suitable for your business. 

Stripe, its options and advantages

If you take a look at the main page of Stripe website you’ll see a statement that it is a perfect option for millions of businesses all over the world. Stripe’s software and APIs are used by companies of all sizes to ensure smooth payment operations and perfect customer service. And that is totally true. Stripe can be called a holistic and convenient payment gateway because it supports more than 135 currencies and is used in 34 countries. 

Based on our experience (and we have integrated Stripe into numerous mobile and web applications), we can say that Stripe is a perfect option for any business and integration is not complicated at all. The thing is that Stripe SDK supports many programming languages and also two mobile operating systems – Android and iOS. As to the payment methods, there is also a variety of them supported. We will not name them all now, since we will add a comparison table of Stripe and Braintree at the end of this article and everything will be mentioned there. And now let’s focus more on key services of Stripe. 

Payment

Although Stripe offers a standard checkout form that you can add to your website or app, there is a customization option. If you use Stripe Elements you will be able to design your own checkout form that will be more suitable and convenient for your business. 

Billing 

When it comes to billing, Stripe is the leading provider of convenient tools. Among them one can see subscription, recurring and invoice tools and even metered billing. All these capabilities are very powerful and useful for numerous businesses. 

Connect

This instrument will be appreciated by all owners of online marketplaces since they help to manage your platform and even organize merchants automated payouts. You can even integrate Stripe and make use of it if you have e-commerce software. 

And now let’s proceed to the key functionality of Stripe that is very useful for both business owners and sellers who use different marketplaces. We will not describe all features but rather stop on the most interesting of them. 

Braintree, its features and pros

Braintree is a well-known payment system currently supported in 46 countries. As to the payments, you can make them in more than 130 currencies. One of the hugest Braintree advantages is that it offers a seamless PayPal integration. Why is that so? Simply because it is a PayPal owned company. 

Speaking about Braintree it is crucial to mention that it consists of four main services that are: Direct, Marketplace, Auth, and Extend. Each service is very important and makes the system fast and convenient. So let’s take a closer look at each of them separately and discover what’s so good about them. 

Direct

This option lets you accept and process the payments online and it is perfect if you own a website that sells goods or services directly. Here is how it works – you integrate Braintree into your app or website, create a transaction, it goes through a fraud check, then it gets to data volt, processed there and you receive the payment. 

Marketplace

While all direct sellers will appreciate the aforementioned service, the marketplace owners will be glad to make use of this one. Thanks to Braintree Marketplace you get a chance to accept multiple pay-inn options and process numerous transactions. Braintree offers a variety of APIs because its owners understand the nature of the marketplace and the variety of business goals that marketplace owners may have. 

Extend

It seems like 2 previous services cover all business needs of selling websites and marketplace owners, however it is not so. Braintree has even more to offer. With its Extend service you get access to data sharing and management tools for secure connection with partners. This service is for big and growing companies that tend to offer simultaneous purchases. For example, such a well-known company as Skuscanner uses Braintree. 

Auth 

Auth is a perfect service for those companies that work with different merchants. So basically you offer all your merchants to integrate Braintree Auth, connect with your platform, and then you can access merchants data to provide your pro services (like invoicing, advanced analytics, billing, etc.). 

Now that you know what Braintree services can be integrated into your solution, it is time to highlight some key features of this payment gateway. Some of them like fraud management and reporting are present in Stripe as well, but in Braintree they are slightly advanced. 

What’s different and similar in Stripe and Braintree?

First of all we’d like to emphasize that whatever payment system – Stripe or Braintree  – you are going to choose, you will need the help of professional developers to set it up and begin using it.

Everything is not that easy as it seems since you will need to integrate APIs necessary for your business, make sure that the integrations are compatible with each other and let your app accept payment without any issues. And this is when the main difference between Stripe and Braintree occurs. In terms of third-party integrations Braintree is easier to comprehend and set up. However, the professional developers rather prefer setting up Stripe and selecting separate code snippets instead of looking for separate references. 

Speaking about the convenience of these payment gateways, both Stripe and Braintree tend to have one peculiarity. They can terminate your merchants account for a specific reason or sometimes for no reason at all. So before choosing the payment system, make sure you’ve read their policies carefully. 

One great advantage that unites Stripe and Braintree is the absence of mandatory multi-year contracts. What does this mean? Simpy that whenever you find another service (better suitable for your business), you can safely transfer your data such as customer base or card vault and continue accepting payments. 

It is a well known fact that technical support means a lot if you are dealing with financial operations. So we could not omit this aspekt speaking about Stripe and Braintree. Although both payment systems have a range of support options, some say that Braintree tends to demonstrate a better client-oriented approach from the very beginning. We will not judge this criteria, since we’ve worked with Stripe a lot and can say that the support it provides is also on a high level. So among the support options in these payment gateways you’ll find: 

• Stripe – phone support, live chat, great knowledge base and documentation, email support and freenode IRC chat.
• Braintree – email support, large knowledge base, comprehensive documentation, phone support.

All merchants when they choose a payment system pay attention to its refund policy because sometimes customers can open disputes and ask for chargeback. With Braintree and Stripe you will be charged $15 fee for the transaction when a refund will be issued. Also, pay attention, that if there is not enough money on your merchant account to pay a fee for refund, the amount of it will be charged from your bank card. 

If you own a marketplace, then probably you know that it requires a special method of money management – split payments. That is why it is necessary to make sure that the payment system you are going to use can work fine with marketplaces. In case with Braintree and Stripe, they both are great for marketplace owners. Basically they both offer the following payments management – the marketplace owner receives a small fee (agreed with sellers who use the marketplace), and the seller get the rest of the paid money. For working with marketplaces Braintree and Stripe offer different tools – Stripe has Connect and Braintree – Marketplace. 

We have also prepared a table for you with the key features of Stripe and Braintree for you. Check it out since that tab can help you make a final decision – whether you need Stripe or Braintree for your business model.

Our experience 

Here at Altamira we work with different businesses that offer various services through digital solutions. And for many of our clients we’ve performed integration of the payment gateway into their solutions. We can say that there were more requests to integrate Stripe rather than Braintree since our clients considered that system to be more convenient and suitable for their business needs. 

So, we’d like to share with you several great examples of solutions that have Stripe integration and work like a charm. We have received numerous positive feedbacks from the clients, so we can claim that Stripe is a great payment gateway. 

Bestyn – app for neighbors

The idea behind estyn was to create a convenient multifunctional solution for neighbors. They should be able to chat, check out and add local news, offer on-demand services and organize local events. So for the on-demand services a reliable payment method was needed. When discussing it with our client, he preferred Stripe since it is more convenient and reliable. We have performed integration successfully and now Bestyn works perfectly. 

HDR Print – solution for custom printing services 

The company owner needed a reliable payment method for his business, because HDR pring offers a huge variety of custom printing options and also standard ones (i.e. printing of documents, banners, posters, etc.). So to ensure the best customer service it was preferable to add different payment options and Stripe turned out to be one of them. 

We have also integrated Stripe into several other different solutions – app for on-demand drone services, travel application, app for on-demand laundry services. As you can see the variety of different businesses can make use of Stripe since it is fast, secure, convenient and user friendly. 

FAQ

Conclusions

If you are building a solution that is going to offer services or goods, you will definitely need to integrate a convenient modern payment method. After all, it is all about convenience and customer service. When choosing between Braintree and Stripe, make sure you’ve examined all peculiarities of these payment systems and selected the one that suits your business model and needs perfectly. 

To integrate Stripe or Braintree into your solution you may need a team of experienced developers, who know what to do and how to end up with a well functioning solution on your hands.