July 28, 2022
Three Top Alternatives to Stripe
Stripe is a financial software you don’t even know you’re using. This payment platform is the software behind large corporations like Amazon, Google, and Uber. But for many small business owners, the features of Stripe are unnecessary for daily financial organization.
Stripe helps businesses collect payments for their products and services. Stripe is a full-stack payment processor, meaning it allows websites to accept debit and credit card payments from any currency. Currently, Stripe is used by over 100,000 websites and can convert more than 100 currencies around the globe.
This differs from PayPal because users do not need to create an account, allowing for easier accessibility. The downfall of Stripe is that it can take 2 days for funds to transfer, while PayPal is instant. Stripe has helped thousands of businesses expand rapidly by terminating purchasing borders.
While Stripe has worked well for Amazon, Google, and Uber, other payment solutions serve more niche operations and ultimately provide a better payment experience.
You have probably seen Square as the little white box at registers that accepts mobile payments. In addition to being an all-in-one merchant solution, Square also connects with third-party software to streamline e-commerce, bookkeeping, and tax preparation software.
Unlike Stripe, Square offers affordable chip card readers and no-monthly fees. One of the major downsides of Square is that it does not offer 24/7 service and many users experience account stability issues. Since there are no monthly fees, add-on features can accumulate to build a high-cost finance software platform.
Shopify is an e-commerce software catered toward entrepreneurs. By using Shopify, merchants can create and customize their online store to sell across multiple channels, including web, mobile devices, in-person locations, brick-and-mortar outlets, and pop-up shops.
Shopify has seamless reporting and CRM features, a stronger POS system compared to Square, and a massive amount of integrations to ensure every gap is filled. The downsides of Shopify include their monthly fee, the cost of add-ons, and the instability of their offline POS system. Overall, as a school treasurer, Shopify might not be the best choice as your finance platform.
Pay Theory is an inclusive family tech SaaS vendor that specializes in education, healthcare, and childcare. In the payment industry, Pay Theory is unique because it allows SaaS vendors to ensure that bank accounts are not a barrier to family payments.
Pay Theory enables businesses to manage and take electronic payments of all kinds, even cash, without using a bank by allowing them to use payments as a gateway to opportunity. Unbanked and underbanked individuals, which comprise 30% of our population, are not able to use typical SaaS platforms like Stripe and Square.
