Stripe vs PayPal: What PAYMILL's Discontinuation Means
PAYMILL is a historical, discontinued payment-service option and should not appear on a new merchant shortlist. European businesses should compare active providers such as Stripe and PayPal against their actual countries, payment methods, risk category, settlement needs, and contract terms. Published headline card fees are only one part of the cost.
Treat PAYMILL as migration history
PAYMILL's original company entered strategic insolvency in 2016 and the business was acquired; its own historical insolvency notice documents that event. The former product is not a current processor to select for a new integration. Legacy merchants should export transaction and reconciliation records, identify the acquiring and settlement relationships in their contracts, rotate obsolete API credentials, and migrate before relying on unsupported endpoints.
Do not copy an old PAYMILL integration to a similarly named site or hand credentials to an unsolicited migration contact. Confirm a provider's legal entity, regulatory status, domain, contract, and settlement bank through independent official channels. Historical pricing and API examples are not safe implementation documentation.
Stripe and PayPal optimize different checkout paths
Stripe offers APIs and hosted components for card and local-payment flows, subscriptions, invoicing, and platforms. PayPal adds a familiar wallet and merchant checkout alongside card processing. Many merchants use both: a primary card and local-method integration plus PayPal as an additional customer choice. The right mix depends on conversion by country, not a universal winner.
Use the current German Stripe pricing page and PayPal merchant-fee schedule for the exact account and product. Rates vary by card origin, payment method, currency conversion, micropayment or charity status, dispute, refund, payout, and negotiated volume. Record the date and contractual schedule used in any model rather than embedding one “typical” fee forever.
Model failures before signing
Calculate cost for a representative month using domestic and international cards, wallets, SEPA, refunds, disputes, failed payments, currency conversion, and payouts. Then test 3-D Secure, webhook retries and signatures, duplicate submissions, idempotency, delayed settlement, partial refunds, subscriptions, reconciliation, and account restriction. A low percentage is worthless if funds are held during the business's peak period.
Prefer hosted fields or checkout to reduce exposure to card data, but confirm the actual PCI DSS scope with a qualified assessor; the PCI Security Standards Council merchant guidance explains merchant responsibilities. Keep provider-independent order state and reconciliation exports so a second processor can be activated. Select on approved business model, payment coverage, settlement resilience, support, and tested integration—not brand familiarity alone.
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