Adyen vs Paddle

Adyen is a global payments company founded in Amsterdam in 2006 by Pieter van der Does and Arnout Schuijff, and listed on Euronext Amsterdam since 2018. Adyen runs its own acquiring, processing and risk stack in one system, so a merchant gets one contract and one report for card payments, local payment methods and in-store terminals across many countries. Customers include Uber, Microsoft, eBay and OpenAI.

The platform covers online checkout through Drop-in and Components SDKs, point-of-sale terminals, Tap to Pay on phones, RevenueProtect fraud scoring, network tokenization, payouts, and Adyen for Platforms for marketplaces that onboard and pay sub-merchants. Pricing is published and usage-based: a fixed $0.13 processing fee per transaction plus a payment method fee, such as Interchange++ plus 0.60% for Visa and Mastercard. There are no setup or monthly fees, though a minimum invoice can apply depending on industry.

Adyen fits large retailers, travel and mobility companies, and marketplaces processing high volumes across several regions, where unified data and acquiring margins matter. It is a poor fit for small shops: onboarding is sales-led, integration needs developers, and support is tuned for enterprise accounts. Stripe is easier for startups and SaaS billing, PayPal brings consumer wallet reach, and Square suits small in-person sellers.

Adyen keeps growing: H1 2026 net revenue was about EUR 1.3 billion, up 19% year on year, and in July 2026 it completed the acquisitions of Talon.One (loyalty and promotions) and Orb (usage-based billing).

Paddle is a London-based payments company founded in 2012 that acts as a merchant of record for software, SaaS, apps and digital products. As the merchant of record, Paddle legally sells your product to the customer on your behalf, which means it calculates, collects and remits sales tax and VAT across more than 200 markets, handles fraud and chargebacks, and issues compliant invoices and receipts.

Paddle Billing, the current platform, combines overlay and inline checkout with localised prices and currencies, cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay and local payment methods, subscriptions with trials, upgrades, proration and dunning, plus APIs and webhooks for developers. Paddle acquired ProfitWell in 2022, which brought Retain for recovering failed payments and free subscription metrics. Standard pricing is a single fee of 5 percent plus 50 cents per transaction, with custom pricing for larger volumes.

Paddle fits SaaS and software companies selling internationally that would rather not register for tax in dozens of countries, including founders in countries where Stripe is not available, such as Turkey. The fee is higher than a payment processor alone, customisation is narrower than building on Stripe, onboarding includes a review, and payouts are slower. Stripe with Stripe Tax gives more control if you can handle compliance yourself, Lemon Squeezy (now owned by Stripe) and Polar serve smaller indie sellers with a similar model, and FastSpring is a long-standing merchant of record competitor.