It’s not all about the technology. Stripe does one thing that makes it light-years better than its competition: Time to market. Or in simpler terms, its activation process to allow you to receive actual payments.
My wife and I run a small website selling vintage items from Germany to Japan. So far, my wife was asking all her customers to pay via bank-transfer. This is naturally time-consuming and for most of her customers, Japanese housewives and arts & crafts lovers, inconvenient. A few months ago I suggested to her to introduce credit-card payments on her website. How difficult could this be to implement?