Great article! Really enjoyed it and think I learned a bunch of new things regarding payments!
If Adyen and Stripe have similar products, differing customers, what do you think is preventing Stripe from grabbing enterprise market share and also creating a lower-fee product?
Adyen is laser focused on the enterprise space. Stripe could definitely go upmarket but I think they would be a little stretched after how many different features they provide to small customers. And Stripe charges way higher prices for that. It would be fairly difficult to go after lower fees while competing with Adyen. Definitely possible. Adyen is currently seeing more competition in the US from Braintree (owned by PayPal) so it’s certainly a competitive space. Margins seem to be compressing across the board and the ultimate bear case is that payments is just a race to the bottom. The bull case is that payments is a wedge that enables a bunch of value added services like marketing functions and tax and compliance. Adyen has a differentiated strategy and they don’t underprice. They sell on value because they have high authorization rates.
Great article! Really enjoyed it and think I learned a bunch of new things regarding payments!
If Adyen and Stripe have similar products, differing customers, what do you think is preventing Stripe from grabbing enterprise market share and also creating a lower-fee product?
Thanks and great questions!
Adyen is laser focused on the enterprise space. Stripe could definitely go upmarket but I think they would be a little stretched after how many different features they provide to small customers. And Stripe charges way higher prices for that. It would be fairly difficult to go after lower fees while competing with Adyen. Definitely possible. Adyen is currently seeing more competition in the US from Braintree (owned by PayPal) so it’s certainly a competitive space. Margins seem to be compressing across the board and the ultimate bear case is that payments is just a race to the bottom. The bull case is that payments is a wedge that enables a bunch of value added services like marketing functions and tax and compliance. Adyen has a differentiated strategy and they don’t underprice. They sell on value because they have high authorization rates.