Stripe Managed Payments
Stripe's Merchant of Record mode for eligible digital products, layered onto Stripe Payments and Checkout.
What changes when you choose Stripe Managed Payments.
- Legal seller
- Stripe Managed Payments is the legal seller
- Service model
- merchant of record
- Pricing certainty
- public
- Review state
- public preview · next review 2026-08-27
Who owns and operates Stripe Managed Payments.
Product capability and company durability are different questions. This view keeps ownership, leadership, funding, and financial disclosure separate from the provider review.
- Founded
- 2010 Brothers Patrick and John Collison cofounded Stripe in 2010.
- Ownership
- Privately held, venture-backed company Independent company
- Headquarters
- Dual headquarters in San Francisco and Dublin
- Team disclosure
- Not publicly disclosed Stripe's newsroom does not publish a current employee count.
Current CEO at the July 2026 review.
Current president at the July 2026 review.
Founders: Patrick Collison, John Collison
$159B valuation in a 2026 employee tender offer
The February 2026 tender provided employee liquidity and included Thrive Capital, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. It was not described as a conventional primary funding round.
Named backers: Thrive Capital, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital
Stripe says it remained robustly profitable in 2025
Business volume is the value processed by businesses using Stripe, not Stripe revenue. Stripe does not publish audited consolidated revenue.
- Business volume
- $1.9T
- Year-over-year volume growth
- 34%
- Revenue Suite run rate
- $1B expected in 2026
- Public revenue
- Not disclosed
- Patrick and John Collison cofounded Stripe.
- Stripe acquired Merchant of Record provider Lemon Squeezy.
- Stripe announced a $159B employee tender valuation and 2025 operating metrics.
3.5% per Managed Payments transaction in addition to Stripe Payments fees.
Illustrative US domestic-card total: 3.5% MoR fee plus 2.9% + $0.30 Payments fee. Stripe Billing adds 0.7% on pay-as-you-go subscriptions; disputes, other methods, international cards, and FX can add costs.
Where it fits—and where it does not.
Strengths
- Small integration change for eligible Stripe Checkout users
- Transaction-level choice between direct and MoR modes
- Familiar Stripe reporting and APIs
Limitations
- Public preview
- Narrower product and seller eligibility
- MoR fee is additional to Payments and other applicable Stripe fees
- Existing eligible Stripe Checkout businesses
- Digital-product companies testing specific markets
- Teams wanting mixed MoR and direct transactions
- You sell services, physical goods, or marketplace products
- You require a generally available, long-established MoR product
Can you use it, and who can buy?
- Seller coverage
- Public-preview eligibility is limited to Stripe's documented supported business locations.
- Buyer coverage
- Global buyer coverage excludes Stripe's documented restricted countries and varies by payment method.
- Product scope
- Eligible digital products, SaaS, software, digital content, and virtual goods; services, physical goods, marketplaces, and many restricted categories are excluded.
What is built in.
- Checkout
- Stripe Checkout, hosted or embedded, with Link as buyer-facing Merchant of Record.
- Subscriptions
- Stripe Billing subscriptions with Managed Payments restrictions and public-preview changes.
- Invoicing
- Managed receipts and invoices; several standalone and off-cycle invoice flows are restricted.
- Payment methods
- Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, and selected local methods documented for Managed Payments.
- Payouts
- Funds settle through the connected Stripe account subject to Stripe payout timing.
Who handles what.
| Responsibility | Primary owner | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Indirect-tax compliance and remittance | Provider | Stripe assumes the documented responsibilities for eligible Managed Payments transactions and supported markets, not every tax obligation everywhere. |
| Fraud, disputes, and transaction support | Provider | Stripe and Link manage these transaction-level responsibilities. |
| Product support | You | The business retains product-level customer support. |
| Data deletion response | Shared | Stripe can cancel subscriptions and delete related Stripe objects after a qualifying buyer request. |
Questions to answer before signing.
- Which provider entity is the seller, and what name appears on receipts and statements?
- Are every product type, seller country, buyer country, and sales channel we use eligible?
- Which indirect taxes, filings, invoices, refunds, and transaction-support tasks are contractually covered?
- Which product-support and customer-communication tasks remain ours?
- What reserve, payout-delay, review, termination, and account-restriction clauses apply?
- Can active payment credentials and subscriptions be transferred to another provider?
- Which reports reconcile gross sales, tax, fees, refunds, disputes, and net payout?
- What changes when we use invoicing, bank transfer, marketplaces, or transactions outside the MoR flow?
Plan the exit while entry is easy.
A dashboard export is not the same as a working migration. Verify these factors with Stripe Managed Payments and a realistic destination.
- Export customers, products, prices, invoices, refunds, disputes, and tax evidence.
- Confirm whether saved payment credentials and recurring mandates can move without asking every customer to pay again.
- Map subscription intervals, currencies, anchors, trials, discounts, cancellation state, and legacy prices.
- Replace provider-specific checkout, portal, webhook, invoice, and entitlement behavior.
- Run old and new reporting in parallel until gross sales, fees, taxes, refunds, and payouts reconcile.
- Retain source records needed for accounting, support, disputes, and statutory obligations after cutover.
Sources and freshness.
Independently triple-checked against primary sources on 2026-07-29. Scheduled for review by 2026-08-27. Verify the linked source before making a production decision.
- How Stripe Managed Payments works Reviewed 2026-07-29
- Stripe pricing Reviewed 2026-07-29
- Stripe Managed Payments eligibility Reviewed 2026-07-29
Compare the same model.
Creem
A newer Merchant of Record built for indie SaaS, AI tools, and digital products, combining global tax handling with product and growth tooling.
Dodo Payments
A developer-oriented Merchant of Record focused on SaaS and digital products, with particular attention to sellers in India and other emerging markets.
Gumroad
A creator-commerce platform and marketplace for digital products, courses, memberships, and simple software sales.