Stripe vs PayPal vs regional payment gateways in 2026

Stripe is the strong default when your clients pay with international cards and you are in a country it supports. PayPal wins on cross-border trust and costs more. Regional gateways such as MyFatoorah and Moyasar win where local debit schemes and wallets dominate. Many service businesses end up with two rails.

The fee that beats every comparison

Before you compare decimal points, check whether the tool you use to send invoices takes a cut of the payment on top of the gateway fee. A gateway charges a processing fee because moving money costs something. That part is fair. A platform that sits between you and the money, holds your balance and skims a percentage as well is a second fee for nothing the gateway was not already doing.

Over a year that second cut can outweigh any difference between providers. The setup to aim for is the client paying directly into your own gateway account, with nothing in the middle taking a share. With that settled, the gateways themselves.

Stripe: the default for a reason

Stripe's checkout is clean, it supports cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and payouts are predictable. It is strongest in three places: an embedded card form where the client never leaves your page, wallets that appear on supported devices, and saved cards for recurring billing if you run retainers.

Its published price in the UAE is 2.9% plus AED 1.00 per successful domestic card transaction, with an extra 1% for international cards and another 1% when currency conversion is needed, according to Stripe's pricing page. Those add-ons are what catch people. A client paying from abroad in a different currency can cost you close to 5% before any invoicing fee. If you also use Stripe Invoicing, there is a fee on top of processing, 0.4% per paid invoice on Starter and 0.5% on Plus, as Stripe's invoicing pricing shows.

The bigger limit is coverage. Stripe lists a fixed set of supported countries, and among the Gulf states only the United Arab Emirates appears on its global page. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain do not. If you or your company are based in one of those, you cannot simply open a Stripe account and take payouts there.

PayPal: reach over price

PayPal's strength is that nearly every client already has an account. A client who has never heard of you will often pay through PayPal because they trust its buyer protection, and that trust closes cross-border deals.

The price of that trust is visible on PayPal's merchant fee page. In the US it lists 3.49% plus a fixed fee for PayPal Checkout and Venmo payments, and 2.99% plus a fixed fee for standard cards on an invoice. The fixed fee is 0.49 USD for dollar payments. International commercial transactions add 1.50%, and currency conversion carries a spread of 3.00% to 4.00%. Pay by Bank on an invoice is 1% capped at 10 USD.

So a payment from abroad in another currency can pass 8% all in, which is the number to compare against Stripe, not the headline rate. PayPal can also hold funds on accounts it considers risky, a real problem when you need the cash to pay your own bills. The post on how to avoid PayPal holds covers how to reduce that risk.

PayPal works well as a second option next to a card gateway, for international clients who prefer it. As the only rail, the fees and the holds make it a weak primary choice.

Regional gateways: local money, local methods

For a business serving one region, a local gateway often beats both big names because it supports the methods your clients actually use.

MyFatoorah lists KNET, Benefit, mada and Apple Pay in its payment methods documentation, and it notes that which methods you get depends on your account and agreement. That makes it a good fit when clients are spread across the Gulf and you want one account. Moyasar is Saudi-focused and says on its site that it accepts mada, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, STC Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, and that it is supervised by the Saudi Central Bank. It does not publish its rates, and its sales team provides them.

Tap, Telr, PayTabs and N-Genius (from Network International, widely used by UAE merchants) are other established acquirers in the region. Their rates are quoted on application, so ask for a written rate card before you commit.

Regional gateways win on three points. Local debit and wallets show up in the checkout, which matters because card-only checkouts stall in markets where people pay with mada or KNET. Money settles in a local account in local currency with no international detour. And onboarding for a local business is often easier than getting into a global provider that does not list your country.

They ask more of you in two ways. You apply, get approved and wait, and the process differs by provider. And rates are often negotiated rather than posted, so compare quotes rather than assuming.

For local rails in more detail, see how Gulf freelancers get paid with KNET and mada.

A short way to choose

Answer three questions.

1. Where are your clients? Mostly in one Gulf country: start with a regional gateway for that country. Spread across the Gulf: an aggregator like MyFatoorah. Global and paying by card: Stripe, if your country is supported.
2. What do they pay with? Local debit and wallets point to a regional gateway. International cards and Apple Pay point to Stripe. A mix of cross-border clients who want something familiar points to adding PayPal.
3. Do you bill recurring work? If you run retainers, saved-card tooling matters, and Stripe is strongest there.

You are not locked into one answer. A primary card gateway plus one local or trusted alternative means no client reaches a checkout that cannot take their money. Offering bank transfer for big invoices also keeps the percentage fees off your largest payments.

How Delivvo connects your own gateway

Delivvo is built around the idea in the first section: the platform handling your documents should not touch your money. You connect your own gateway account, the client pays into it, and Delivvo takes 0%. It is never the merchant of record.

The gateways Delivvo supports are Tap, MyFatoorah, Moyasar, Telr, PayTabs, N-Genius, Stripe, PayPal and Checkout.com. So the choice in this post is yours, and changing your mind later does not mean changing your invoicing tool.

The flow looks like this:

1. You connect a gateway in your payment settings. Your gateway credentials are encrypted before they are stored.
2. You send a quote. The client opens one link, picks a package, signs the contract and pays the deposit.
3. Delivvo creates the client, project, contract, invoice and payment schedule from that single acceptance.
4. Later invoices carry a Pay button that goes to your gateway, so a client in Riyadh can pay with mada and a client abroad can pay by card, depending on what you connected.
5. The client portal shows what is paid and what is due, so you do not chase receipts by message.

A detail competitors rarely have: invoices and contracts can be issued in Arabic and English, and every document carries a verification code that shows who issued it, its number, amount and status. Some features are still being rolled out, and Delivvo's payment pages list what works today for each gateway. Start with Delivvo payments and the page on paying through Stripe.

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