Stripe vs Revolut vs PayPal for Irish online stores

Three names dominate Irish ecommerce checkouts: Stripe, Revolut Business, and PayPal. They look interchangeable from the outside. They're not. Here's the practical comparison after running them on real Irish stores.

Stripe

• Fees: 1.5% + €0.25 for EEA cards, 2.5% + €0.25 for UK, 3.25% + €0.25 for international.
• Payouts: 7-day rolling for new accounts, then 2-day standard.
• Integrates with everything — Shopify, Squarespace, WooCommerce, custom builds.
• Best-in-class developer tooling. If your store is custom-built, Stripe is the default.
• Excellent fraud detection (Radar), built-in subscriptions, and Apple Pay / Google Pay out of the box.

Revolut Business

• Fees: 1% + €0.20 for EEA consumer cards on the Grow plan — cheaper than Stripe at low volume.
• Payouts: instant to your Revolut Business account.
• Limited integrations — Shopify and WooCommerce yes, but the ecosystem is much smaller than Stripe's.
• Strong if you already bank with Revolut Business and want money in your operating account immediately.
• Weaker on advanced features (subscriptions, complex tax, multi-currency edge cases).

PayPal

• Fees: 2.9% + €0.35 for EEA, higher for cross-border.
• Payouts: instant to PayPal balance, 1–3 days to your bank.
• Most expensive of the three for card payments — but a meaningful share of Irish shoppers will only check out via PayPal.
• Chargeback handling famously favours the buyer.
• Worth offering as a secondary method, not your primary.

What we recommend for Irish SMEs

1. 1.Primary: Stripe. Lowest realistic effective rate once you factor in Apple/Google Pay conversions and fraud protection.
2. 2.Secondary: PayPal as a fallback. Roughly 10–20% of Irish online shoppers prefer it.
3. 3.Consider Revolut Business if you're doing under €5,000/month in card volume and already use Revolut for your business banking.

What about Klarna and Afterpay?

Buy-now-pay-later is becoming standard on Irish stores. Klarna integrates with Stripe via a single toggle — turn it on if your average order value is over €60. Smaller baskets don't benefit.

The biggest mistake we see

Stores that bolt on 4 payment methods at launch and overwhelm the checkout. Start with Stripe + PayPal. Add others only if you can show a conversion lift.