Clay Pay vs Stripe

Stripe and Clay Pay both move money. The question is fit. Stripe is unbeatable for SaaS billing online cards to global customers. Clay Pay is the right call when you sell in-person, live in a high-risk vertical, or process more than $1.5M annually and want the spread back from flat-rate. If your read on this is 'I just want to pay less on processing,' the bigger lever than any rate comparison is dual pricing or cash discount, which we set up as part of the onboarding and which Stripe does not offer.

Pick Clay Pay if

• You run physical retail, food service, or any in-person concept
• You're in a vertical Stripe classifies high-risk (hemp, kratom, peptides, firearms, adult, adult AI, coaching, MLM, continuity offers, travel, debt consolidation, extended warranty, supplemental insurance, prop firms)
• Annual processing is over $1.5M and you want interchange-plus
• You need POS hardware, kitchen integration, or forecourt processing
• You'd rather have a phone number than a help center

Pick Stripe if

• You're a SaaS company billing card-not-present recurring transactions
• You're a marketplace under $5M GMV needing fast time-to-market with Connect
• Your customers are global and you need broad currency support out of the box
• You're under $1M annually and value predictable flat-rate pricing
• Engineering bandwidth is your bottleneck and Stripe APIs unblock it