Which Is Better for Small UK Businesses?
The deciding question is where your customers pay from, and how your checkout is built.
Take a Manchester florist on WooCommerce: £8,000 of card revenue a month, with 30% of orders shipping to the Netherlands and Belgium.
Run that £2,400 of European card volume through Stripe at 2.5% + 20p and the percentage part costs about £60. Mollie puts European cards at 2.90% + £0.20, so the same volume costs about £70, with the 20p per order the same on both.
Mollie wins it back at home. The florist’s £5,600 of UK consumer cards costs about £67 on Mollie against £84 on Stripe, so the shop still comes out roughly £7 a month ahead on Mollie, before a single Dutch shopper reaches for iDEAL at £0.30 flat against Stripe’s £0.25 plus 1.5%.
Subscriptions tilt the other way. A UK SaaS with 800 members at £39 a month leaks revenue every time a card expires and a renewal silently fails.
Stripe Billing adds 0.7% on top of processing, but you get the dunning logic, retry schedules and webhooks that stop those failed renewals slipping away. Mollie’s recurring API works, yet it does not match that workflow. For subscriptions, Stripe.
Engineering-led teams land on Stripe almost by default. Ready-made code libraries cover seven server-side languages, there is a command-line tool you can pipe into local tests, and a busy developer Discord behind it.
That matters the first time a developer hits a problem at 9pm. On Stripe they find the answer in the community; on Mollie they wait for the morning.
Marketplaces point the same way. Stripe Connect runs split payouts and white-labelled onboarding through Standard, Express and Custom accounts. Mollie Connect, launched September 2024, handles simpler builds but has no Custom-tier equivalent.
Open Banking is the one B2B case where we send Mollie-leaning readers back to Stripe. A UK agency invoicing 20 clients a month at £3,500 pays £5 an invoice on Stripe Pay by Bank, where the fee is capped at £5, against about £16 on Mollie.
On £70,000 of monthly invoicing, that is roughly £220 a month back in your account.
Stripe vs Mollie Fees and Charges
Card Transaction Fees
On a UK domestic consumer card, Stripe charges 1.5% + 20p and Mollie charges 1.20% + £0.20. Thirty basis points cheaper on Mollie.
At £10,000 of monthly card volume across roughly 500 transactions, that is about £30 a month kept.
European Economic Area (EEA) cards are where Stripe claws it back. Stripe charges 2.5% + 20p on European consumer cards since Brexit; Mollie puts European cards in its 2.90% + £0.20 band, the same rate it charges on UK commercial cards.
A UK Shopify store doing £40,000 a month, split half UK and half EU, pays about £800 in percentage fees on Stripe and about £820 on Mollie. The UK saving and the European surcharge very nearly cancel out, and the tipping point sits at about 43% European cards: below that Mollie is cheaper on cards, above it Stripe is.
Commercial cards narrow the gap. Stripe charges 2.8% + 20p on premium UK cards, which covers commercial and business cards; Mollie charges 2.90% + £0.20.
If your customers are mainly other UK companies paying on corporate cards, that 10-point gap still leans to Stripe, if only slightly.
Amex favours Stripe too: Stripe prices Amex as a standard card at 1.5% + 20p, against Mollie’s 2.50% + £0.20. Non-EEA international cards lean to Stripe: 3.15% + 20p against Mollie’s 3.25% + £0.20.
In person, Stripe Tap to Pay runs 1.4% + 10p with a £0.10 per-authorisation surcharge on top. Mollie’s Tap Terminal on PAYG is a flat 1.20% on domestic consumer cards with no fixed fee.
On Mollie’s Pro tier that drops to 0.85% + £0.10. Worth the maths if you take more than £5,000 a month at the counter.
Monthly, Setup and Contract Costs
Both charge £0 a month on the standard tier. No setup fee, no minimum contract, and you pay only on successful transactions.
Mollie spells out “no lock-in” on its pricing page. Stripe runs on the same basis, but the notice period is not stated there. If procurement needs it in writing, pull the current Stripe UK terms before signing.
Stripe’s real cost sits in the add-ons. Billing adds 0.7% on top of processing. Radar fraud screening starts at 4p a screened transaction. Smart Disputes takes 30% of the disputed amount on each dispute it wins.
Run Billing plus Radar and your effective rate on a UK card climbs above 2%, against the headline 1.5%. The brochure rate is rarely the rate you pay.
Other Fees to Watch
FX costs both ways. Stripe adds 2% when a charge needs converting. Mollie charges 1% of the payout amount to convert a payout into another currency.
On the published figures Mollie’s fee is half of Stripe’s. The two apply at different points, though: Stripe converts each charge as it comes in, and Mollie converts the payout.
Chargebacks cost money on both. Stripe’s pricing page lists £20 for each dispute received. Mollie’s UK pricing page lists no card chargeback fee; its help centre gives £25 for each lost dispute on Klarna payments.
Stripe Instant Payout settles to a UK bank inside 30 minutes for 1%, around the clock. Handy when Friday’s takings need to be in your Starling account before the Saturday supplier run.
Mollie has no instant equivalent. Its fastest schedule is daily, with the first 5 payouts a month free and £0.25 for each one after that if you process under £500,000 a year: good for predictability, no use in an emergency.
iDEAL is where the gap bites hardest. Stripe charges £0.25 per transaction, plus 1.5% on international payments; Mollie charges £0.30 flat.
A store doing 500 iDEAL payments a month at £40 average pays roughly £425 on Stripe against around £150 on Mollie. That is £275 a month on one payment method.
SEPA Direct Debit shows the same shape: Stripe £0.30 plus 1.5% on international payments, Mollie £0.30 flat.
Fee Verdict: Who Costs Less
Mollie wins on UK consumer cards and every EU payment method. Stripe wins on European cards, on Amex, narrowly on UK commercial cards, and on Open Banking payments above about £1,070, where its £5 fee cap applies.
For a UK shop selling mostly to UK consumers, we rate Mollie as the cheaper home. For B2B-heavy or Amex-heavy merchants, or a shop where European cards make up close to half the card revenue, run the Stripe maths first.
A worked example: £10,000 a month on UK consumer cards costs about £220 on Mollie and £250 on Stripe. You keep roughly £30 before any EU traffic. Work out your real monthly volume and you will see which side you land.
Add a 40% European card mix to that £10,000 and the saving almost disappears: about £188 on Mollie against £190 on Stripe in percentage fees. What tips a WooCommerce shop with real Dutch or German customers towards Mollie is not the card rate but iDEAL and SEPA, where its flat £0.30 undercuts Stripe on every international payment.
But if your typical customer pays on Amex, a corporate card or a European card, or you collect high-value B2B invoices over Open Banking, Stripe is the cheaper home. We recommend pricing your own card mix before trusting either headline figure.
Stripe vs Mollie Payment Methods and Checkout
Cards, Wallets and Alternative Payment Methods
The baseline kit is identical. Both take Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Both cover the European method set: iDEAL, Bancontact, SOFORT, EPS, Giropay, Przelewy24, plus Klarna, Bacs and SEPA Direct Debit. If you only need the basics, the choice is not here.
Stripe Link is the first real difference. A returning Link buyer checks out in about six seconds, which matters most on repeat-heavy mobile traffic, where a long form is where the sale goes. Mollie has no one-click wallet of its own.
We read Stripe’s own card documentation on 6 October 2026: Discover, Diners Club, China UnionPay and Japan Credit Bureau all work on a Stripe account with no extra configuration. If you sell to visitors carrying those cards, we found nothing you have to build to take them.
For a London hotel taking bookings from US business travellers, that scheme breadth is the difference between an accepted card and a declined checkout.
Mollie answers with Billie, a B2B buy-now-pay-later product for EU business buyers that Stripe has no match for, plus flat-fee methods Stripe cannot touch post-Brexit.
iDEAL costs £0.30 flat on Mollie against £0.25 plus 1.5% on international payments on Stripe. On any real Dutch volume, the integration pays for itself inside a quarter.
Stripe’s Open Banking Pay by Bank, launched May 2024, runs on UK Faster Payments. Mollie offers pay-by-bank at 0.45% + £0.20, but it does not name the rail underneath. Its own page says only that collection is usually instant, that some banks take longer, and that the money joins your next payout rather than arriving on its own. So the speed you can count on is your payout schedule, not the payment (mollie.com, checked 27 August 2026).
Checkout Experience
Stripe gives you three shapes: a hosted Checkout page, embedded Elements for custom forms, and no-code Payment Links. Mollie mirrors all three.
Both handle Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and 3DS2 automatically, with exemption logic across low-value and recurring payments. On an authenticated transaction, 3DS2 shifts fraud-chargeback liability to the card issuer, real protection if your category sees disputes.
We confirmed both hold PCI DSS Level 1 status. Use either hosted page and you usually qualify for the Self Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) A route, the shortest of the compliance forms, the lightest audit scope. That matters when an enterprise customer asks for PCI evidence at procurement.
Methods Verdict
Global breadth goes to Stripe: Discover, Diners, UnionPay, the Link wallet and Faster Payments under Open Banking. If you process cards from outside Europe, that coverage is decisive.
EU methods go to Mollie. iDEAL and SEPA at £0.30 each are flat fees Stripe cannot match at £0.25 and £0.30 plus 1.5% on international payments.
For a WooCommerce or Magento store with regular Dutch or German checkouts, Mollie’s method pricing outweighs Stripe’s wider scheme list at almost any volume.
Stripe vs Mollie Hardware, POS and In-Person
Card Readers and Terminals
Stripe’s UK pricing page lists four readers. The WisePad 3 at £49 excl. VAT is the entry pick: Bluetooth, PIN pad, around 15-hour battery.
The S700 and S710 at £229 are smart Android readers with on-screen checkout, and the T600 is £249. All of them need a developer to wire them in through Stripe’s Software Development Kit (SDK), so none of them works out of the box.
Stripe Tap to Pay needs no hardware: an iPhone XS or newer takes contactless, plus £0.10 per authorisation on the in-person rate.
Mollie’s Tap Terminal is £95 PAYG, one-off, with 4G and Wi-Fi, a touchscreen, tipping and digital receipts built in.
The 4G is the real difference. A market trader at a county show on patchy signal keeps taking cards on Mollie’s terminal. Stripe’s entry WisePad 3 is Bluetooth-only and goes down with the phone.
Mollie also runs a Tap app that turns an NFC phone into a reader, plus Tap to Pay on iPhone. Its mobile and fixed terminals are £350 each, unchanged when we checked mollie.com/gb/pricing on 5 October 2026.
POS Software and Hardware Add-ons
Stripe Terminal needs developer integration through its SDK. There is no quick install for a non-technical retailer.
The depth pays back if you have engineers and want online and in-person data in one dashboard. For a sole-trader florist or a market stall, that build time is a non-starter.
Mollie Tap is closer to plug-and-play: end-of-day reports, tipping and digital receipts with no SDK work.
Both ship companion apps. Neither has a confirmed native link to Epos Now, Lightspeed or other countertop POS suites, so verify before assuming compatibility.
In-Person Verdict
Developer-led businesses should take Stripe in person: one data pipeline, full Terminal SDK control, a single dashboard. If your team already runs Stripe online, the consistency saves real integration time.
Market traders and non-technical shops should take Mollie. The £95 Tap Terminal with 4G costs more than the £49 + VAT Bluetooth WisePad 3, but it is more resilient. Unbox and trade.
Both treat in-person as a sideline behind their online gateway. Neither competes with Square, SumUp or Zettle for full countertop retail, so we would point you to one of those if a fixed till and barcode scanning are core to your shop.
Stripe vs Mollie Online Payments and Integrations
Hosted Checkout, Payment Links and APIs
If your team builds on the API, Stripe is the stronger pick. Server-side SDKs cover seven languages; mobile SDKs cover iOS, Android and React Native.
Webhooks ship with retry backoff and idempotency keys, and the default rate limit is 25 requests a second. The command-line tool, Workbench, Console and developer Discord mean engineers debug without raising a ticket.
That maturity is why Shopify, DoorDash and most Y Combinator companies sit on Stripe Connect.
Mollie added idempotency keys in December 2022 and offers classic plus next-gen webhooks. Its docs are thorough but less acclaimed, and we found no public community on the scale of Stripe’s.
For a small engineering team, that gap shows up the first time someone needs a quick answer late at night.
Platform Integrations
Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, BigCommerce and QuickBooks all have official integrations on both. Mollie’s WooCommerce plugin adds an event log, useful the first time a failed transaction needs investigating.
For Magento, take Mollie. Its official extension by Magmodules covers Magento 1 and 2 with 20-plus methods configured out of the box. Stripe has no confirmed official Magento plugin.
For Xero, take Mollie again. The official integration via Maze Digital UK reconciles card payouts straight into your ledger. Stripe has no direct Xero plugin, so you fall back on A2X or Zapier.
For an accountant reconciling in Xero each quarter-end, that native link saves real time and stops a connector subscription running.
For marketplaces, Stripe Connect is the mature choice, with Standard, Express and Custom accounts. Mollie Connect, launched September 2024, covers simpler UK and EU builds but has no white-label Custom tier.
Online Verdict
Take Stripe for developer-led builds, marketplaces, and anything needing Stripe Billing, Capital or Adaptive Pricing.
Take Mollie if you run on Magento, reconcile in Xero, or skew EU-method-heavy.
A WooCommerce store on a Xero stack whose Dutch shoppers pay by iDEAL is the case where Mollie wins on every dimension at once.
Stripe vs Mollie Payouts, Contracts and Risk
Settlement Speed and Payout Schedule
Standard Stripe payouts reach a UK bank in 3 business days, though a new account’s first payout is held for about 7 days. A £200 minimum for GBP multi-currency settlement catches some new merchants out in week one.
Stripe Instant Payout costs 1% and clears inside 30 minutes, around the clock, via Faster Payments. Reach for it when Friday’s takings need to land before Saturday’s supplier run.
Mollie lets you set daily, weekly or monthly payouts in the dashboard. If you process under £500,000 a year, the first 5 payouts a month are free and each one after that costs £0.25. A set schedule makes cash-flow modelling cleaner than Stripe’s standard window.
There is no Mollie instant payout. If a 30-minute settlement matters to your operations, Stripe takes this category outright.
Contract Length and Exit Terms
Neither locks you in. No minimum contract, no exit fees. Mollie states “no lock-in” on its pricing page; Stripe runs the same way without saying so as plainly.
If procurement needs the exact notice period in writing, pull the current Stripe UK terms before signing.
Data-export terms on cancellation are not confirmed for either. If you might switch back to a traditional acquirer later, ask both before you integrate.
Reserves, Holds and Account Stability
This is the sharpest difference between the two, and we weight it most heavily on a real decision.
Stripe’s UK Trustpilot profile, 1.1 out of 5 from 267 reviews, shows a pattern: unexplained closures, funds held with no timeline, templated replies, no human to escalate to.
For a retailer whose rent depends on uninterrupted settlement, that is a cash-flow planning input, not background noise. Imagine an account frozen mid-month with rent due Friday and no one to call.
Mollie’s profile is the opposite: 4.4 from about 12,900 reviews, praised for fast support and transparent pricing. The complaint minority covers occasional deactivations and email waits up to 10 days.
Real, but neither the scale nor severity matches Stripe’s. Neither provider publishes reserve policies, and both reserve the right to hold funds during AML or fraud reviews.
If uninterrupted processing is critical to your weekly cash flow, we rate Mollie the lower-risk choice on the evidence available.
Stripe vs Mollie Customer Reviews and Reputation
Trustpilot and Independent Review Themes
Stripe UK sits at 1.1 out of 5 from 267 Trustpilot reviews. The complaints fall into three buckets: verification holds at onboarding, closures with funds frozen mid-month, and templated support with no human route.
For any UK firm whose cash flow rides on uninterrupted settlement, we treat that fund-hold pattern as a real operational risk, not a marketing gripe.
Mollie sits at 4.4 from about 12,900 reviews, with 4.4 from 197 on OMR and 3.6 from 29 on Capterra. The praise is consistent: fast support, a clean dashboard, transparent pricing.
Its minority complaints cover occasional unexplained deactivations and 10-day email waits on the slowest tickets. We weight the gap heavily: 4.4 against 1.1, across far more reviews, reflects how merchants actually experience each one after signup.
Support Channels and Response Times
Stripe support is mostly email and asynchronous. The docs, API reference and Discord are strong for engineering questions.
But when an account is frozen mid-month and rent is due Friday, a developer Discord is not the channel you need. The missing human escalation route is where merchants feel it.
Mollie offers an in-dashboard help centre plus email, and most reviewers praise fast, competent replies; a minority report 10-day waits.
Neither offers UK phone support. If payments drop on a high-takings Saturday, both leave you on an email queue, a shared weakness against traditional acquirers like Worldpay or Elavon.
Reputation Verdict
Mollie wins decisively on reputation: 4.4 against 1.1, from a far larger base, with no systemic freeze pattern to match Stripe’s.
If cards are more than half your monthly revenue, we would treat Mollie’s account-stability record as the primary deciding factor, wherever the rate maths lands.
Stripe vs Mollie for International Payments
If your customers reach beyond Europe, Stripe is the only viable pick of the two. It operates in 46 countries, accepts payments from 195-plus, and processes 135-plus currencies.
Mollie covers the EEA, UK and Switzerland only. It pays out in EUR, GBP, USD and a dozen more, with extras on request, but you cannot run US-dollar or APAC volume through it.
If you face EU consumers, the card rate favours Stripe. It charges 2.5% + 20p on European cards; Mollie charges 2.90% + £0.20.
A UK Shopify store doing £25,000 a month of EU consumer cards pays about £625 on Stripe against about £725 on Mollie, so Stripe is roughly £100 a month cheaper on cards alone.
iDEAL and SEPA swing it back to Mollie. Stripe charges £0.25 (iDEAL) and £0.30 (SEPA), plus 1.5% on international payments; Mollie charges a flat £0.30 on both. With Dutch shoppers or recurring SEPA mandates, you pay far less on Mollie at any real volume.
On currency conversion, Mollie’s published fee is half of Stripe’s, though it comes off the payout rather than off each charge.
For genuine multi-currency volume, price Airwallex on FX before locking in either of these two.
Downsides of Stripe and Mollie
Downsides of Stripe
Account instability is the most material downside. The Trustpilot pattern across 267 UK reviews is consistent: unexplained fund holds, accounts closed with money withheld, no human to escalate to.
If Monday’s supplier run depends on Friday’s settlements, a two-week freeze is catastrophic, not inconvenient. We would carry a working-capital buffer if you go with Stripe.
The effective rate beats the headline. Layer the 1% cross-border surcharge, 2% FX, Billing at +0.7% and Radar from 4p a screened transaction, and a SaaS sending international invoices clears 2.5% all-in on a domestic card.
EU payment methods are where Stripe costs more. iDEAL at £0.25 and SEPA Direct Debit at £0.30 both carry 1.5% on top for a UK account, so on a £40 iDEAL order a Dutch shopper costs you 85p on Stripe, nearly three times Mollie’s flat 30p.
In person needs developer resource. Terminal is SDK-driven, and the entry WisePad 3 at £49 + VAT is Bluetooth-only with no 4G, so a market trader on a bad signal day is stuck.
Downsides of Mollie
Mollie is EU, UK and Switzerland by design. If your roster includes US enterprise clients or APAC distributors, you hit its coverage limit inside the first quarter. Stripe’s 46-country footprint is not matched.
B2B card volume is a smaller weakness. UK and EU commercial cards cost 2.90% + £0.20 on Mollie against 2.8% + 20p on Stripe’s premium UK card rate.
An accountancy practice taking corporate-card payments pays roughly £10 more per £10,000 of monthly volume on Mollie.
Open Banking is dearer on large invoices. Mollie charges 0.45% + £0.20 with no cap; Stripe charges 0.5% + 20p but caps the fee at £5 a payment. On £50,000 a month of £2,500 invoices, that is about £229 on Mollie against £100 on Stripe.
There is no instant payout. If proceeds must reach your Tide account by 6pm to pay a supplier the same day, Mollie’s fastest is next-day; Stripe clears in 30 minutes.
Mollie also declines high-risk industries outright: cannabidiol products, gaming, forex and vape are confirmed exclusions. Both publish a full restricted list running to dozens of categories, and the two lists do not match, so a business refused by one is not automatically refused by the other.
Alternatives to Stripe and Mollie
Airwallex is the pick if you receive multi-currency revenue or pay overseas suppliers. FX runs at 0.5% above the interbank rate on major currencies and 1% on others, below Mollie’s 1% payout conversion fee and Stripe’s 2% conversion fee.
For a UK consultancy invoicing US and EU clients, the FX saving alone can beat the card-rate gap between Stripe and Mollie.
GoCardless is the UK Direct Debit specialist, and on recurring sterling volume it beats both: 1% plus 20p, capped at £4 a payment, with no monthly fee. On a £900 invoice that is £4 against roughly £13 through Stripe. For EU-only recurring volume, Mollie SEPA at £0.30 flat is still hard to beat.
Shopify Payments waives Shopify’s external-gateway fee when it is your primary processor, and its card rate falls with the plan: from 2% plus 25p on Basic to 1.3% plus 25p on Plus. For a pure-Shopify store with no need for cross-platform flexibility, that often makes it the cheapest option overall, though the saving only lands if you are already paying for the plan the rate comes with.
Mollie charges the lowest UK card rate of any gateway on this list at 1.20% + £0.20, with no monthly fee and no contract.
View details →Final Verdict: Stripe or Mollie?
For UK shops on WooCommerce, Shopify or Magento whose customers pay mainly on UK consumer cards, or by iDEAL and SEPA, Mollie is the stronger choice.
UK consumer cards at 1.20% against Stripe’s 1.5%. iDEAL at £0.30 against £0.25 plus 1.5%. SEPA at £0.30 against £0.30 plus 1.5%. Trustpilot 4.4 against 1.1.
Mollie also wins for Magento merchants, Xero-first accounting, and plug-and-play in-person through the Tap Terminal.
For developer-led teams, SaaS subscriptions, marketplaces, and any UK business scaling beyond Europe, Stripe is the only real pick. API depth, Billing, Connect and a 46-country footprint are products Mollie does not match.
The price of Stripe is an account-stability record that calls for a cash buffer, though on European cards it is the cheaper of the two, at 2.5% against Mollie’s 2.90%.
Compressed: Mollie wins for UK small and medium-sized businesses selling mostly at home or through iDEAL and SEPA, on cost, reputation and non-technical setup. Stripe wins on European cards, developer depth, global reach and marketplace infrastructure.
On cards alone the gap is small either side of the line, and the line sits at about 43% European cards. Before you sign either, we would run your real UK and EU revenue split through both price lists, and add your iDEAL and SEPA volume, because that is where Mollie’s saving gets large.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mollie cheaper than Stripe for UK businesses?
For most UK businesses selling to UK consumers, we rate Mollie as cheaper. On UK domestic consumer cards Mollie charges 1.20% + £0.20 against Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p, a 30 basis-point saving per transaction.
On European cards the gap runs the other way: Mollie charges 2.90% + £0.20 against Stripe’s 2.5% + 20p, so Stripe is cheaper on EU card traffic.
Stripe also wins on Amex (1.5% + 20p, as Stripe prices Amex as a standard card, vs Mollie’s 2.50% + £0.20), UK commercial cards (2.8% + 20p vs Mollie’s 2.90% + £0.20), and Open Banking payments above about £1,070 (0.5% + 20p capped at £5, vs 0.45% + £0.20 with no cap).
On non-EEA international cards Stripe charges 3.15% + 20p against Mollie’s 3.25% + £0.20.
Is Stripe FCA regulated in the UK?
Stripe Payments UK Limited is an electronic money institution authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, firm reference number 900461, since 2 May 2018.
That registration is public: the Financial Conduct Authority register lists it against that number, so the claim is checkable rather than something you take on trust.
Is Mollie FCA regulated in the UK?
Mollie UK Ltd holds a payment institution licence from the Financial Conduct Authority, firm reference number 977968. Mollie announced the licence in November 2023.
The licence followed Mollie’s conversion from the temporary permissions European Union firms held after Brexit. It too is listed on the public register against that number.
Does Mollie support iDEAL for Dutch customers?
Mollie supports iDEAL at £0.30 flat per transaction. Stripe also supports iDEAL but charges £0.25 per transaction, plus 1.5% on international payments.
On an average £40 iDEAL order, your Mollie cost is 30p; on Stripe it is 85p. For any UK store with regular Dutch shoppers, that is a significant cost saving on every checkout.
Does Stripe or Mollie have better customer support?
Mollie wins on every documented metric. The Trustpilot scores tell the story: Mollie 4.4/5 from about 12,900 reviews against Stripe 1.1/5 from 267 UK reviews.
Reviewers praise Mollie for fast, professional support; Stripe is criticised for templated responses, unexplained account holds, and the lack of a human escalation route.
Neither provider offers UK phone support. Both rely on email and in-app chat. If your business is cash-flow-dependent and a payment freeze would be catastrophic, Mollie’s support record is a material reason to prefer it over Stripe.
Can I use Stripe and Mollie for in-person payments in the UK?
Yes, both offer UK in-person acceptance. Stripe Terminal starts with the BBPOS WisePad 3 at £49 excl. VAT (Bluetooth, PIN pad). Mollie Tap Terminal costs £95 PAYG (4G plus Wi-Fi, touchscreen, plug-and-play). Both support Tap to Pay on iPhone at no hardware cost.
The decisive difference is setup. Stripe Terminal requires SDK developer integration, which is not a quick install without technical staff. Mollie Tap is plug-and-play with automated end-of-day reports and digital receipts built in. For a retailer without a developer, Mollie is the simpler path.
How we reviewed Stripe vs Mollie
Ranking criteria. We compared Stripe and Mollie on pricing, fees, feature set, eligibility, and contract terms. We also checked each provider’s regulatory status on the FCA register.
Data sources. Every provider’s pricing page, terms, and product docs were checked directly in October 2026. No comparison sites, no press releases, no affiliate material. FCA register cross-checked for regulatory status.
Update cadence. We re-verify every provider on this page regularly, and whenever a provider changes pricing, eligibility, or terms. The verification date on the page reflects the most recent full review. Some links on this page are affiliate links, see our editorial policy.