Best Payment Gateways in 2026

Stripe is a payments infrastructure company led by co-founders Patrick and John Collison, with dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin and offices in London, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo, among others. Its annual letter states that businesses on Stripe generated US$1.9 trillion in 2025. Stripe combines gateway, processing and acquiring, so merchants sign one agreement and integrate through APIs, embeddable components, hosted Checkout or Payment Links.

Its standard US pricing has no setup or monthly fees: 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards online, plus 1.5% for international cards and 1% where currency conversion is required. In-person Terminal payments cost 2.7% + 5¢. ACH Direct Debit is 0.8% with a $5 cap. Disputes cost $15. Radar fraud screening is priced from 5¢ per screened transaction or $10 a month, and Billing costs 0.7% of billing volume on pay-as-you-go. Custom domains for Checkout and Payment Links cost $10 a month. The breadth of products is also its main complexity: effective cost rises as add-ons are layered, and international card surcharges matter for cross-border sellers.

Adyen provides gateway, risk management, processing and acquiring on a single platform for online, mobile and in-store payments. In its third-quarter 2026 business update it reported net revenue of €738.1 million, up 23%, and processed volume of €451.1 billion, up 30%, and guided to an EBITDA margin of 50% for 2026.

Adyen publishes the structure of its pricing: a fixed processing fee per transaction plus a payment-method fee, with no setup or monthly fees and a single integration for all methods. For North America the processing fee shown is US$0.13; major card schemes are priced at interchange++ plus 0.60%, and buy now, pay later and local methods carry their own fees. Interchange++ lets finance teams reconcile network costs line by line. Adyen is designed for merchants with engineering resources and meaningful volume; very small businesses generally find simpler options elsewhere.

Checkout.com is an online payments platform providing gateway, acquiring and payment-method processing for large digital businesses. It states that it supports more than 150 currencies and offers domestic acquiring in more than 45 countries.

Pricing is quote-based and tailored to each business. Checkout.com describes three structures: a fully flat rate determined by business profile and risk category; interchange++, in which interchange, scheme and processor fees are itemised; and free processing for registered charities in the countries where it operates. It states that there are no setup fees and no account-maintenance fees, but publishes no per-transaction rates. The lack of public rates means smaller merchants cannot estimate costs without a sales conversation; the platform is aimed at businesses whose volume justifies negotiation.

Braintree is PayPal's gateway and processing service for larger merchants. Its developer documentation describes a global payments platform supporting credit cards, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH Direct Debit and Secure Remote Commerce, with client SDKs for Android, iOS and JavaScript and checkout options including Hosted Fields, Drop-in UI and Fastlane. Braintree's pricing page now redirects to PayPal's enterprise site.

PayPal's pages returned access errors during research, so Braintree's current rates are not quoted here. PayPal Holdings, its parent, reported third-quarter 2026 total payment volume of US$487.1 billion and 440 million active accounts, and the ability to offer PayPal and Venmo checkout alongside cards through one integration is Braintree's main distinguishing feature. Merchants should obtain current rates from PayPal's enterprise fee page or a sales quote.

Authorize.net is a payment gateway that describes itself as powered by Visa's payments ecosystem, and links to Visa and Cybersource. It is one of the few large gateways sold separately from acquiring, so merchants can connect it to a merchant account from their bank or processor; Chase, for example, lists Authorize.net among its integration partners.

All plans cost $25 a month with no setup fee and no early termination. The gateway-only plan charges 10¢ per transaction plus a 10¢ daily batch fee; the gateway-plus-eCheck plan adds 0.75% per eCheck; and the all-in-one plan, which includes a merchant account, charges 2.9% + 30¢ subject to eligibility. Features include online card, eCheck and wallet payments, a virtual terminal, mobile and Tap to Pay acceptance, invoicing, Simple Checkout buttons, Advanced Fraud Protection, Account Updater, recurring payments and 24/7 support. The fixed monthly fee makes it relatively costly for very low volumes.

Worldpay provides gateway, processing and acquiring services and, since 12 January 2026, has been owned by Global Payments Inc., which bought it from FIS and GTCR while selling its Issuer Solutions business to FIS. Global Payments, based in Atlanta, says the combined company serves more than six million merchant locations, processes about US$3.7 trillion in payment volume and about 94 billion transactions a year, and operates in more than 175 countries.

The combined business sells through Enterprise, SMB, and Integrated and Platforms channels and plans more than US$1 billion a year of product investment. Gateway and processing pricing is quoted individually and was not published on the pages consulted. The scale and country coverage are its main strengths; the pending integration of two large platforms is the main uncertainty for new enterprise contracts.

Mollie is a European payments company serving more than 350,000 businesses in Europe and the United Kingdom with about 1,000 employees. It provides a gateway and acquiring covering cards and European payment methods, and also offers in-person terminals.

Mollie publishes per-method pricing with no minimum costs or lock-in contracts. EEA consumer Visa and Mastercard transactions cost 1.80% + €0.25, EEA commercial cards 2.90% + €0.25, non-EEA cards 3.25% + €0.25 and American Express 2.90% + €0.25. Cartes Bancaires consumer cards cost 1.20% + €0.25. iDEAL costs €0.32 per transaction and PayPal costs PayPal's fees plus €0.10. Terminal plans are pay-as-you-go at €0 a month or Pro at €20 per terminal per month. Mollie is focused on Europe; businesses selling mainly to North America will find fewer local advantages.

Razorpay is an Indian payments company whose gateway accepts domestic cards, UPI and RuPay, as well as international cards for exporters. Its standard plan applies a single platform fee across most domestic instruments.

On the standard plan, domestic Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Diners cards, UPI and RuPay debit carry a 2% platform fee per successful transaction; corporate or business credit cards cost 2.15%. International cards cost up to 3%. There is no setup fee and no annual maintenance charge, and refunds incur no processing fee. Goods and services tax at 18% applies to the platform fee. International bank transfers on the standard plan cost 1% with a stated 0% foreign-exchange markup. Businesses processing more than ₹5 lakh a month can request custom pricing. Razorpay notes that UPI is MDR-free under Reserve Bank of India policy, so its UPI charge is a platform fee rather than a merchant discount rate.

NMI describes itself as a global embedded payments enablement platform. It sells mainly through partners (independent sales organisations, software and SaaS companies, banks and payment facilitators) rather than directly to merchants. It reports more than 1.2 million active merchants, about 6,000 channel partners, more than US$700 billion in annual payments volume and more than 150 processor connections, as well as over 300 EMV device certifications. It trades in the United Kingdom as Network Merchants Ltd, and has acquired Dwolla and Fee Navigator.

NMI's processor-agnostic design lets a reseller board merchants onto whichever acquirer suits them while keeping one gateway. Its all-in-one payments product allows partners to share in net payment revenue. Merchant pricing is set by the reselling partner, so NMI publishes no merchant rates. These figures are self-reported by NMI.

Square, part of Block, Inc., offers online payment acceptance through its developer API, hosted checkout links, online store and invoices, sharing one account and dashboard with its in-store hardware. That unified view of in-person and online sales is the main reason small merchants use Square as their gateway rather than a standalone provider.

Square publishes its US rates. Payments made through the online API cost 2.9% + 30¢ on all plans. Online store and invoice payments cost 3.3% + 30¢ on the free plan and 2.9% + 30¢ on Plus and Premium. Manual card entry costs 3.5% + 15¢. ACH bank transfers via API cost 1% with a $1 minimum and $5 cap, and Afterpay costs 6% + 30¢. Square's online tools are less extensive than Stripe's for complex subscription or marketplace use cases, and the free plan's invoice rate is above typical gateway pricing.

PayPal Checkout adds PayPal, Venmo and Pay Later buttons, and optionally card fields, to a merchant's website. PayPal Holdings reported total payment volume of US$487.1 billion, revenue of US$8.58 billion and 440 million active accounts in the third quarter of 2026. For many merchants PayPal acts as a second gateway alongside a card processor, adding a wallet option that customers recognise.

PayPal's US merchant-fee pages returned access errors during research for this article, so current rates are not quoted. PayPal's schedule distinguishes PayPal Checkout, standard and advanced card processing, Venmo, QR-code and in-person payments, and adds charges for international transactions; merchants should consult the live schedule. Larger merchants needing deeper customisation typically use Braintree, PayPal's enterprise gateway.

Helcim offers an online payment gateway, hosted payment pages, invoicing and a virtual terminal alongside its in-person readers, all priced on interchange-plus with no monthly account fee. Figures come from NerdWallet's review updated 5 March 2026, because Helcim's own site blocked automated access.

For monthly volume up to $50,000, online and keyed transactions cost interchange + 0.50% + 25¢; between $50,000 and $100,000 the markup falls to 0.45% + 20¢, with lower tiers above. ACH payments cost 0.5% + 25¢, capped at $6 for transactions under $25,000. Hardware is optional. For merchants with mostly consumer debit and standard credit cards, interchange-plus can undercut flat-rate gateways, though the effective rate depends on the card mix. NerdWallet cites deposits of up to two business days and reports of sudden account terminations as drawbacks.