Security, offline and access rules that differ between PayPal and Stripe. Rows where both tools are the same (3) are left out; the full side-by-side is on each tool’s page: PayPal, Stripe.
Card numbers AES-256 at rest; TLS 1.2+ required in transitsource
Offline limits
Reconnect within 24 hours of the first offline payment; offline mode requires a PayPal Reader on the latest softwaresource
Offline mode works only with supported Terminal readers; Tap to Pay on Android doesn't support itsource
Office & room hardware
PayPal sells the Bluetooth Card Reader and the PayPal Reader for in-person chip, contactless and mobile-wallet payments through the Point of Sale app.source
Stripe Terminal supports pre-certified card readers (Stripe Reader S700/S710, BBPOS WisePOS E, Stripe Reader M2, BBPOS WisePad 3, Verifone) and Tap to Pay.source
Set up single sign-on in Stripe before you invite the team, so accounts are created through your identity provider rather than by hand.
Checked September 19, 2026 against each vendor’s own trust center, help docs and app pages. Hover or tap “source” to see the exact wording we relied on. “Not published” means we could not find the vendor saying it on its own site; it doesn’t mean the feature is missing. Plan names are the lowest plan the vendor says includes the feature. Security · Offline · Remote vs office · Download the data
PAYMENTS · MIGRATION GUIDE
Switching from PayPal to Stripe
This is the more common direction: growing businesses outgrow PayPal’s checkout-first model and move to Stripe for programmable billing, better reporting, and broader payment method coverage, and Stripe has built real tooling to ease exactly this move.
Quick verdict: If you need subscription flexibility, detailed reporting, or a real developer platform, this move is usually worth it — and Stripe’s official PayPal-import tooling meaningfully lowers the switching cost compared to most other payment migrations.
Why teams switch from PayPal to Stripe
Programmable billing and metering
Stripe’s Billing API supports usage-based pricing, proration, and complex plan changes that PayPal’s Subscriptions product doesn’t natively handle.
Deeper reporting and reconciliation
Stripe’s Dashboard, Sigma, and Revenue Recognition tools give finance teams a level of transaction-level detail PayPal doesn’t expose.
Broader payment method and currency support
Stripe supports a wider range of local payment methods and currencies out of the box, which matters once you’re selling beyond a single core market.
Estimate the real hidden cost of moving from PayPal to Stripe, not just the transaction fees.
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Estimated migration time
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Data friction rating
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Total hidden switching cost
Data mapping & cleaning labor—
Migration / cleaning tooling fees—
Team retraining overhead—
Switching friction buffer (10%)—
Assumes a blended $45/hr internal labor rate, using Stripe’s import flow for PayPal billing agreements. Adjust the sliders to match your team.
How to migrate your data
Stripe has built specific tooling to reduce re-authorization friction for exactly this migration, which makes it meaningfully smoother than most cross-processor moves.
Step
What happens
1Request a Stripe data migration
Enroll in Stripe’s PAN (card number) import program or, for PayPal specifically, use Stripe’s saved-payment-method import flow for PayPal billing agreements.
2Import existing PayPal billing agreements
Stripe can import a customer’s existing PayPal billing agreement ID so recurring PayPal payments continue without the customer re-approving, though webhook fidelity for some events (like agreement cancellations) is reduced compared to a native PayPal integration.
3Recreate products and prices in Stripe
Rebuild your plans as Stripe Products and Prices, since PayPal’s subscription plan definitions don’t map one-to-one.
4Wire up Stripe Billing and webhooks
Connect Stripe’s subscription lifecycle events (invoice.paid, customer.subscription.updated, etc.) to your app in place of PayPal’s IPN notifications.
5Migrate checkout and invoicing UI
Replace PayPal buttons with Stripe Checkout, Elements, or Payment Links depending on how much UI control you want.
6Reconcile the cutover period
Run a short parallel period so in-flight PayPal subscriptions finish out normally while new signups start on Stripe.
What Stripe’s importer doesn’t handle: The billing-agreement import only covers recurring PayPal payments — one-off transaction history, PayPal disputes/cases, and PayPal-specific buyer protection claims don’t transfer, and webhook fidelity on imported agreements is reduced for certain lifecycle events like cancellations, so test that path carefully before relying on it.
Pricing during the transition
Both are usage-based with no monthly platform fee, so the meaningful comparison is your blended effective rate.
Plan
PayPal
Stripe
Standard online transaction
3.49% + $0.49 for PayPal Checkout; 2.99% + $0.49 for standard credit and debit card payments (US domestic)
2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge
Micropayments / small-ticket rate
4.99% + $0.09 with Micropayments pricing (by application, for lower-value transactions)
custom volume pricing available on request
Monthly platform fee
$0 — pay-as-you-go on a standard business account
$0 — pay-as-you-go
Run your actual transaction mix and average ticket size through both fee schedules. Stripe is often cheaper per-transaction at typical SaaS/e-commerce ticket sizes, but neither vendor publishes a plan name that settles the comparison for you.
Feature-parity checklist
This direction is usually a genuine capability upgrade, with a few real tradeoffs on the consumer-trust side.
Feature
PayPal
Stripe equivalent
Developer API / webhooks
limited IPN-style notifications
a genuine upgrade — modern REST API, SDKs, and a mature webhook event model
Recurring billing engine
basic subscription plans
a genuine upgrade for usage-based pricing, proration, and plan changes
Checkout conversion for consumer buyers
strong brand recognition with some audiences
a real downgrade for buyers who specifically look for the PayPal button, unless you also keep PayPal as a payment method inside Stripe
Reporting and reconciliation
basic transaction history
a genuine upgrade via the Dashboard, Sigma, and exportable reports
Dispute / chargeback handling
built-in buyer/seller protection program
more configurable via Stripe Radar, but requires more setup than PayPal’s turnkey flow
Can I keep accepting PayPal after I move to Stripe?
Yes, Stripe supports PayPal as a payment method inside Stripe Checkout, so you don’t have to drop PayPal entirely just because your core processing moves to Stripe.
Will my existing PayPal subscribers have to re-enter payment details?
Not necessarily: Stripe’s billing-agreement import can carry over an existing PayPal billing agreement so recurring charges keep working, though you should test the cancellation/webhook behavior before fully relying on it.
Does this migration move my PayPal transaction history into Stripe?
No, it only covers active billing agreements for future charges, not historical transaction records, which you’ll want to export from PayPal separately for your own books.
Is Stripe’s PayPal import free?
Stripe’s data migration programs (PAN import, billing agreement import) are typically arranged through Stripe support/sales rather than a self-serve dashboard toggle, so confirm current terms with Stripe directly for your account size.
How long does the cutover usually take?
Most teams run a multi-week parallel period, letting existing PayPal subscriptions run out or convert gradually while directing new signups to Stripe from day one.
Canonical data for the tools on this page
Every pricing fact, rating, AI billing model and switching guide we hold on each tool, on one page, with the date each figure was last verified.
Prices on this page were recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page on the date shown at the top of the page. Vendors change pricing often — check the live source before you buy.
Verified prices costed for your team size, a check against your must-have requirements, the questions to settle before you sign, and a source for every figure. Print it, or paste it into an email to whoever approves the spend.
Built for the leader who owns the selection, answers for the spend, drives the rollout, and lives with the results. HelpCompare covers the whole decision, not just the first step.
Engineer by training, operator by experience, marketer by choice. Bill spent eight and a half years as an engineer at HP, was COO of Auctiva (the number one third-party selling platform on eBay, past 200,000 users) and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. Then he spent 13 years building his own web properties with his own money at stake. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.
“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”
Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. Pricing on this page was last verified on September 16, 2026. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.
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