European alternatives to Stripe: Mollie, Adyen and Klarna compared

Switching payments providers is one of the higher-risk migrations on a website. Before comparing tools, get clear on what actually matters.

• EU incorporation and licensing. The legal entity you contract with should be licensed by an EU member state regulator, not a US parent acting through a subsidiary.
• Pricing transparency. Some providers publish per-transaction rates; others quote per customer. Both can be the right choice, but they suit different stages.
• Payment methods. The local methods your customers actually use: iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, SEPA Direct Debit across the eurozone, BLIK in Poland, Swish in Sweden, Vipps in Norway, MobilePay in Denmark.
• Migration story. SCA, recurring tokens, saved cards. You need a plan for how existing subscriptions move (or stay) when you switch.

Here is how the three options compare on the criteria that matter most:

Mollie is a Dutch payment service provider. The contracting entity, Mollie B.V., is licensed and registered as an electronic money institution with De Nederlandsche Bank (the Dutch central bank). It is the most direct one-for-one Stripe replacement on this list for SMB and mid-market ecommerce.

Pricing is published openly. Standard rates on the Mollie pricing page show 1.80% + €0.25 for European Economic Area consumer cards (Visa and Mastercard), 2.90% + €0.25 for EEA commercial cards, and 3.25% + €0.25 for non-EEA cards. SEPA Direct Debit costs €0.35 per transaction and SEPA bank transfer €0.25. There is no monthly fee, no setup fee and no lock-in contract. Volume pricing with IC++ is available for businesses processing more than €100,000 per month.

Local payment methods include iDEAL (Netherlands), Bancontact (Belgium), Vipps (Norway), MobilePay (Denmark), Swish (Sweden), BLIK and Przelewy24 (Poland), Wero, EPS, Bizum, TWINT and others. Klarna is offered through Mollie as a payment method, with rates that vary by country (2.99% + €0.30 in DACH, 2.99% + €0.40 in Benelux, 4.50% + €0.30 in France).

Best for: European SMBs and mid-market ecommerce that want published, predictable pricing and an EU-licensed provider without a sales call.

Adyen is also based in the Netherlands. It is a listed company (Euronext Amsterdam), licensed as a bank by De Nederlandsche Bank, and serves large enterprises: Booking.com, Uber, eBay, Microsoft and Spotify are among the publicly disclosed customers. For European retailers operating at scale, Adyen is the most credible full-stack alternative to Stripe.

Pricing follows the Interchange++ model. According to their pricing page, the structure is a fixed processing fee of $0.13 per transaction plus a payment-method fee determined by the card type or local method. For example, iDEAL is €0.22 per transaction; for Visa and Mastercard it is Interchange+ + 0.60%. There are no setup or monthly fees, but final pricing requires a sales conversation.

Adyen runs a single platform for online, in-person and in-app payments, with the same integration across channels. That uniformity is the main reason large multichannel retailers consolidate on it. The trade-off is that you cannot just sign up online and start taking payments in 10 minutes the way you can with Stripe or Mollie.

Best for: larger merchants and multichannel retailers that want IC++ transparency, enterprise support, and an EU-regulated provider that can carry global volume.

Klarna is headquartered in Stockholm and is a fully licensed bank in Sweden, authorised by Finansinspektionen. It is the largest Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) provider in Europe, with 119 million shoppers and 1 million+ retail partners according to its own enterprise homepage.

One important nuance: Klarna is not a full-service card acquirer in the same way Mollie and Adyen are. It is primarily a payment method (Pay in full, Pay in 30 days, Pay in 3 or 4 instalments, longer-term financing) that you add alongside cards. Klarna's own "Get started with our partners" page lists Stripe, Adyen, Mollie, Nexi, Worldpay, Worldline and Checkout.com as the recommended way to integrate. You can also contract directly with Klarna without a partner.

For European merchants, especially in the Nordics and Germany where BNPL has high adoption, Klarna often appears in the checkout regardless of which PSP processes the cards. The relevant question for most teams is therefore not "Klarna or Stripe" but "does my EU PSP support Klarna as a payment method". Both Mollie and Adyen do.

Best for: adding BNPL as a payment option, especially when targeting Nordic and German consumers. Not a one-for-one Stripe replacement for card processing.

Payment migrations are higher-stakes than most other vendor switches because a broken checkout means lost revenue from the moment it breaks. Plan for a parallel period rather than a hard cutover.

Step 1: Decide what stays on Stripe. Recurring subscriptions with saved cards are the hardest part to move, because card tokens are not portable between PSPs without a customer-facing reauthentication step. Many teams move new transactions to the new PSP and let existing subscriptions run out on Stripe.

Step 2: Set up the new PSP in test mode. Create an account, run their integration against your staging environment, and verify the full set of payment methods your customers use (cards, SEPA, iDEAL, BLIK, Vipps, whatever applies). Test the dispute and refund flows.

Step 3: Cut over new transactions. Switch the production checkout to the new PSP for new customers and one-off purchases first. Monitor for failed transactions and chargeback rates in the first weeks. Keep Stripe live and handling existing subscriptions in parallel.

Step 4: Verify the front end is clean. Run a StackPatrol scan on your site and confirm that js.stripe.com no longer loads on pages that should not need it. You may still see it on subscription management pages while old subscriptions run out, which is expected.

Stripe is rarely the only US payment-related script on a checkout. PayPal, Apple Pay JS, Google Pay JS and fraud-prevention SDKs from US vendors all add to the third-party footprint. A scan of the checkout flow tends to surface a few of those.

For broader context, our guide to US data processors covers the categories of vendors that most often show up on European sites and the EU-incorporated alternatives for each.