Choosing a Payment Gateway for Adobe Commerce: Payment Services, Stripe, Adyen, PayPal

For most Adobe Commerce and Magento stores, the payment gateway choice comes down to four options: Adobe Payment Services, Stripe, Adyen, or PayPal and Braintree. Payment Services is the simplest if you sell mainly in its supported countries and want an Adobe-integrated option. Stripe suits merchants who want fast setup, many wallets and subscriptions. Adyen suits larger, multi-country merchants who need many local methods and interchange++ pricing. PayPal and Braintree make sense where PayPal and Venmo are a large share of how your customers pay. The right answer depends on your markets, payment methods, fee model, PCI scope, checkout and B2B needs.

This guide compares the four on those six factors, explains PCI scope in plain terms, and gives a short process for deciding.

What is bundled with Magento today

Adobe's payment methods documentation (checked November 2026) lists:

• Payment Services: Adobe's recommended online payment option, included out of the box with Adobe Commerce since 2.4.7 and also compatible with Magento Open Source.
• PayPal Express Checkout and Braintree: bundled on the PaaS editions. Braintree has been included in the core release since 2.4.0.
• Offline methods: check or money order, bank transfer, cash on delivery, zero subtotal checkout and purchase order, plus Payment on Account for Adobe Commerce B2B.

Several older gateways, including Authorize.Net, were removed from core in 2.4.0 and moved to vendor extensions, and Amazon Pay and Klarna stopped being bundled from 2.4.4. Stripe and Adyen are installed as vendor-maintained extensions.

The comparison

This table reflects vendor documentation as of November 2026. Country lists, methods and pricing change often, so confirm the current position for your markets before you sign. We have left out rate figures on purpose: your effective cost depends on your card mix, countries, average order value and what you negotiate.

Adobe Payment Services

Payment Services is built into the Admin, with reporting, payouts and dispute information alongside orders. It offers two onboarding tiers: a standard tier with PayPal buttons across many countries, and an advanced tier with card fields, Apple Pay and Google Pay in a defined list of countries. It supports card vaulting, and Level 2 and Level 3 card data for lower B2B card costs in the US. It is the most integrated option for Adobe Commerce, and on Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service it is one of the bundled services.

Stripe

Stripe's plugin supports Adobe Commerce 2.3.7 to 2.4.x. You can embed Stripe's Payment Element or redirect to Stripe Checkout; Stripe states both are SAQ A eligible. Payment methods are switched on in the Stripe Dashboard, and the plugin includes a subscriptions engine and saved payment methods. A good fit for direct-to-consumer brands, subscriptions and fast international expansion.

Adyen

Adyen's plugin is open source and built by Adyen, with separate major versions for different Magento lines (check which version matches your release). It covers cards, local methods, tokenization, 3-D Secure, risk tools, Pay by Link and in-person payments. Pricing is interchange++ plus a processing fee, which large merchants often prefer for transparency. A strong fit for multi-country and omnichannel retailers.

PayPal and Braintree

PayPal's developer guide recommends its PayPal Complete Payments extension and describes it as compatible with current Adobe Commerce 2.4.x versions, and Braintree (a PayPal company) is bundled in core. If PayPal, Venmo or Pay Later drive a large share of your orders, offering them prominently matters more than which gateway processes cards.

PCI scope in plain terms

Your PCI DSS obligations depend on how card data reaches the payment provider. The current standard is PCI DSS v4.0.1.

• SAQ A: card entry is fully outsourced, through a redirect or the provider's iframe fields. Your servers never touch card data. This is the lightest path and what most modern integrations aim for.
• SAQ A-EP: your site serves or controls the payment page in ways that can affect card data security, such as building the form with your own scripts. More requirements apply.
• SAQ D: you store, process or transmit card data yourself. Rarely sensible for a Magento store.

In January 2025 the PCI Security Standards Council revised SAQ A. It removed the payment-page script requirements (6.4.3 and 11.6.1) from SAQ A and added an eligibility criterion: merchants must confirm their site is not susceptible to attacks from scripts that could affect the payment process. The Council's FAQ explains you can meet this with script controls of your own or confirmation from your PCI-compliant provider. On a Magento store, where injected scripts are a known attack route, keep a Content Security Policy and script monitoring on checkout pages regardless.

This is general information, not legal or compliance advice. Confirm your SAQ type with your acquirer or a qualified assessor.

B2B needs

B2B checkouts often need more than card payments:

• Purchase orders and payment on account: core offline methods in Adobe Commerce B2B. Online payment providers handle the card side.
• Level 2 and Level 3 card data: can reduce interchange costs for business cards in the US; Payment Services supports it on interchange++ pricing.
• Saved cards and tokenization: needed for repeat orders and approvals; all four options support vaulting.
• Pay by link and phone orders: useful for sales-assisted orders; Adyen documents Pay by Link.
• Invoicing and terms: often handled in your ERP rather than at checkout.

How to choose: a five-step process

1. List your markets and their top payment methods from your own order data and local research. Our guide to cross-border ecommerce covers local method expectations by region.
2. Remove providers that do not support those methods in your countries.
3. Check your checkout: Luma, Hyvä Checkout or headless. Confirm an integration exists and is maintained for that exact setup and version.
4. Model fees on your real card mix, including international cards, refunds, chargebacks and currency conversion. Ask each provider for a quote based on a sample month.
5. Review risk tools: 3-D Secure handling, fraud scoring and dispute management. Our guide to ecommerce fraud prevention explains what to look for.

Running two providers is common: for example, one for cards and wallets and PayPal alongside it. Keep the number of payment modules small, though, because each one is part of your upgrade and checkout testing.

Checkout experience matters as much as the provider

The gateway is only part of conversion. Show the methods customers expect for their country, offer express wallets early, keep 3-D Secure challenges smooth, and test failure messages. Our Magento checkout optimization guide covers the rest of the flow.

FAQ

Can I use Payment Services on Magento Open Source?

Adobe's compatibility page lists Magento Open Source as supported, as well as Adobe Commerce on-premises, on cloud infrastructure and as a Cloud Service.

Is switching payment providers hard?

Installing a new module is the easy part. Saved cards, subscriptions and refunds on old orders need planning, because tokens usually cannot move between providers without a migration process run by the providers.

Which provider is cheapest?

It depends on your card mix and volume. Blended pricing is simpler; interchange++ is more transparent and often better at scale. Compare quotes on your own transaction data.

Next step

Choosing the provider is quick; integrating it cleanly with your checkout, ERP and refunds process is where projects slip. Mistri's Adobe Commerce development team handles payment integrations end to end, and our Magento extension development service covers custom payment or B2B logic when no module fits.

Sources

Payment Services compatibility (Adobe Experience League); Payment methods (Adobe Commerce Admin guide); Stripe plugin for Adobe Commerce (Stripe docs); Adyen plugin for Adobe Commerce (Adyen docs); Important updates for merchants validating to SAQ A (PCI Security Standards Council); Hyvä Checkout available payment integrations (Hyvä docs); PayPal upgrade guide for Adobe Commerce (PayPal Developer); PayPal Braintree fees (PayPal, checked November 2026); getPaymentConfig query, Payment Services GraphQL (Adobe Developer).