Stripe and Square are the two biggest names in payment processing. Both were founded in the late 2000s, both became public companies with multi-billion-dollar market caps. But they have fundamentally different philosophies: Stripe is for developers and online business, Square is for retail and offline.

Philosophy and Positioning

Stripe is a platform for the internet economy. Created by developers for developers: clean API, excellent documentation, full programmability. If your business is a website or an app, Stripe gives you maximum flexibility in how the payment process looks and works.