Adyen vs Stripe: Comparison for Australian businesses

If you’re running a business in Australia and need a way to accept payments, two popular options are Adyen and Stripe. Both are global platforms boasting strong reputations, but they’re built slightly differently, with Adyen big on large-scale payment infrastructure and Stripe more focused on flexibility and integrations.

This guide breaks down Adyen vs Stripe in practical terms, taking a deep dive into features, fees, and how they compare, to help you find a payment gateway that fits your needs.

There’s also an intro to Wise Business – a multi-currency account to support and manage all your international transfers and business finances.

What is Adyen?

Adyen is a global financial tech platform founded in 2006 in Amsterdam that now processes €970+ billion in payments annually¹. It’s built to give businesses in Australia full control over how money ‘moves’ – grouping its products into three core categories: Payments, Optimisations, and Financial Products².

Rather than acting just as a payment gateway (which it does well), Adyen brings together payments, data insights, and financial tools in one place, so businesses can process transactions and also target new revenue streams.

What is Stripe?

Stripe is a global payments and financial infrastructure platform that lets businesses accept and manage payments, when operating locally in Australia and selling internationally. It also gets through a huge volume of payments – $1.9 trillion in total in 2025.

A big part of Stripe’s appeal is its API-first design. It gives businesses the freedom to customise how payments work, from checkout experiences to billing and reporting, all within a single platform. It groups its products into four main categories: Payments, Revenue, Money Management, and Platforms and Marketplace³.

Adyen vs Stripe: Features and functionality comparison

Here’s a quick rundown of how the payment gateways stack up across key features.

Now, let’s compare Stripe vs Adyen directly, starting with an important feature: payment acceptance.

Payment methods and global reach

Adyen supports 19+ payment methods in Australia and hundreds globally, allowing you to tailor checkout experiences for local markets, all with one integration to keep things simple⁴. It offers five different payment categories, including direct debit, buy now pay later, gift cards, and e-wallets⁴.

One big fillip for Adyen is its access to local payment networks, with everything optimised to increase international authorisation rates⁴. That can be very valuable for larger, global businesses, where small improvements in payment success rates can translate to a big uptick in revenue.

Stripe also supports a wide range of payment methods (125+), covering cards, bank debits, real-time payments, and buy-now-pay-later options⁵. Where it really shines is how easy it is to switch these on – you can enable new methods directly from the dashboard, and Stripe will present the most relevant ones to customers using its own optimisation tools.

Its global reach is vast, too, with 135+ currencies and the ability to sell to customers in 195+ markets⁶. With Stripe, you can present prices in local currencies and manage multi-currency settlement (for a fee), which is useful for international expansion.

Integrations and developer expertise

Adyen is designed as a single, enterprise-grade integration, where your website or app connects directly to its platform to manage payments, data, and optimization in one place². It also integrates with major systems like Oracle and Salesforce⁷. But these setups are typically more ‘hands-on’ with ongoing configuration required.

Stripe offers a large ecosystem of pre-built integrations and APIs through its own App Marketplace⁸. These are designed for a faster, ‘self-service’ setup, so you can stitch together different tools right away and start processing payments without a ton of technical expertise (you’ll still need some developer know-how).

Security and fraud protection

In terms of security, both platforms are very well stocked. You’ll get PCI DSS Level 1 standards^9,10 – the highest level of certification for payment security.

Stripe encrypts all financial data and layers this with access controls and its headline fraud monitoring tool, Radar, which uses machine learning trained on $1+ trillion transactions to detect suspicious activity¹¹.

Adyen offers something similar with ‘Uplift Protect’, to tackle fraud, but broadens its scope to also identify ‘good’ and ‘bad’ shoppers to improve your overall payment performance, and boost conversion and authorisation rates¹².

Recurring payments

For recurring payments, Stripe offers multiple services in its ‘Revenue’ category, including Billing, which lets you manage all sorts of payments, including simple monthly billing to more detailed, sales-negotiated contracts, with automation to keep things running smoothly¹³. There’s also full invoicing software.

Again, Adyen’s focus is on optimisation here, instead of simply just managing subscriptions, though it does that, too. An ‘Auto Rescue’ feature uses “smart logic” to find the best time to retry failed transactions to make sure it goes through¹⁴.

Adyen vs Stripe: Cost comparison

Pricing is one of the big differences between Adyen and Stripe, with both using different models for transactions and fees.

Pricing plan

Adyen uses an interchange++ model, where the fees are made up of several ‘components’ or moving parts instead of one flat rate. This includes an interchange fee for either the payment method or card network, plus a markup. These vary depending on the region.

In Australia, you’ll typically pay¹⁵:

• A fixed processing fee - $0.13 per transaction
• An interchange fee - set by the card network (Visa, Mastercard)
• A markup - Adyen adds around +0.60% for most major card payments

For alternative payment methods, things work slightly differently. Instead of the interchange fee, you’ll pay a fixed percentage per transaction. For example, 3.75% for JCB and 3+% for Afterpay or Zip.

Stripe uses a simpler flat-rate pricing model, with a fixed percentage plus a small fee per transaction, which makes it easier to fully understand the costs involved¹⁶.

• 1.7% + $0.30 AUD per successful domestic card transaction
• 3.5% + $0.30 AUD for international cards

Fees involved

There are no account setup fees for either Adyen or Stripe, but you’ll have to pay for any additional features on a per-transaction or monthly basis.

Adyen says other products are “priced separately” to its payment methods, and provides a prompt to get in touch with its sales team to “calculate your pricing”¹⁵.

Stripe’s fees are more transparent – there’s a full list for all services across all categories on its pricing page. For Billing, for example, you can either pay 0.7% of the billing volume on a pay-as-you-go basis or opt for a pay monthly contract starting from $930 AUD¹⁶.

Refunds and chargebacks

Stripe supports full and partial refunds, but it doesn’t return the original processing fee¹⁷. For chargebacks, it will cost you⁶:

• $25 AUD for each dispute received
• $25 AUD if you counter disputes manually

Adyen also offers full and partial refunds¹⁸, but doesn’t return processing fees (which is an industry norm). Chargeback costs aren’t explicitly stated.

International transaction fees

Adyen’s fee structure means international transactions are priced similarly to domestic payments (depending on the method). It does add a pretty hefty 3% markup on currency conversions, though¹⁹.

Stripe charges 3.5% + $0.30 AUD for international cards, with an additional 2% when converting currencies, and +1% (of volume) if you want to settle and pay out funds in different currencies¹⁶.

Adyen vs Stripe: Pros and cons

Taking everything we’ve covered so far into account, here’s a final review of some of the upsides and potential challenges of using either Adyen or Stripe.

Considerations when choosing a payment gateway for your business

A payment gateway should fit neatly into your daily workflows and how your business actually operates, while offering a balance of compelling features and value. Take some time to consider:

• The size of your business - startups and micro businesses might only need a plug-and-play gateway to get going, without any advanced features.
• Where your customers are based - if you’re selling mainly domestically in Australia, simple, low-cost local payments might be preferable, but if you’re operating globally, multi-currency support and FX costs are likely to be more important.
• The technical resources available - do you have developers in-house to fully set up and customise a more complex system, or is something more ready-made better suited?
• The total cost - The headline transaction fees don’t tell the full story. Make sure to include add-on features, currency conversion markups, chargebacks, and other fees to get a better ‘ballpark’ figure for the actual cost.

Beyond gateways: Wise Business for cross-border transactions

By using a payment gateway, you’ll be able to accept money, but the bit that comes after is important, too. Wise Business is a multi-currency account that sits alongside platforms like Adyen and Stripe to handle all your international transactions.

Expanding a business globally opens up exciting opportunities, but also new challenges like receiving payments across borders. Hidden foreign transaction fees and hefty currency conversions involved with international payments can eat into your profits and time.

Wise Business serves as a cost-effective solution where you can receive money from around the world at the speed and price of local payments.

Transform the way you receive payments with Wise Business:

• One-time fee of 65 AUD for local account details in 8+ currencies, including AUD, NZD, USD, and more—no recurring fees
• One account to hold, send, and convert money with no hidden fees or exchange rate markups
• Create and send professional invoices directly to your customers through Wise Business
• Create payment links to request money in specific currencies
• Seamlessly receive payments from customers, online sales, or PSPs like Stripe and Amazon.
• Wise is safe and secure - Trusted by 13 million people and counting

Sign up for the Wise Business account! 🚀

This general advice does not take into account your objectives, financial circumstances or needs and you should consider if it is appropriate for you.

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Sources:

1. Adyen AU - About
2. Adyen AU - Home page
3. Stripe - Home page
4. Adyen - Payment methods
5. Stripe - Payment methods
6. Stripe - Global payment innovation
7. Adyen - Plugins
8. Stripe - App marketplace
9. Adyen - What is PCI DSS compliance
10. Stripe - PCI compliance
11. Stripe - Radar
12. Adyen AU - Uplift Protect
13. Stripe - Billing
14. Adyen - Subscription
15. Adyen AU - Pricing
16. Stripe - Pricing
17. Stripe - Understanding fees for refunded payments
18. Adyen - Online payments refund
19. Adyen - Foreign exchange fees