Stripe named a Leader by independent research firm for merchant payment providers

<figure><img src="https://imgix.cosmicjs.com/c337a150-ad5e-11f1-88c6-910437611bfe-forrester-social-card-march2026-1200x600-final-2x.png" alt="Forrester Social Card March2026 1200x600 final@2x"></figure>

SAN FRANCISCO AND DUBLIN—Stripe, the programmable financial services company, was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Merchant Payment Providers, Q1 2026, receiving the highest possible scores in more criteria than any other evaluated payments provider. Stripe is also the only company evaluated in both the Forrester Wave™: Recurring Billing Solutions, Q1 2025 and Forrester Wave™: Merchant Payment Providers, Q1 2026 to be named a Leader in both reports.

Last week Stripe shared that in 2025, businesses running on Stripe generated $1.9 trillion in total payments volume, up 34% from 2024, and equivalent to roughly 1.6% of global GDP. Stripe powers more than 5 million businesses directly or via platforms, including all of the top AI companies, many of the largest bluechip companies (90% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average), most of the biggest tech companies (80% of the Nasdaq 100), and a significant fraction of new startups (25% of all Delaware corporations are now created with Stripe Atlas).

Kevin Miller, head of payments at Stripe, said: “Our job is to eliminate the word ‘can’t’ from commerce. Can’t accept that payment method. Can’t sell in that country. Can’t handle subscriptions and one-time purchases. Can’t support agentic transactions. We want every one of those to be a ‘can’. To us, Forrester’s recognition shows we’re making a lot of progress, despite knowing we’re never done.”

Patrick and John Collison wrote about Stripe’s continued investments in payments performance in Stripe’s 2025 annual letter:

Unlike more speculative paths to growth, optimizing your payments setup is almost guaranteed to yield extra revenue and to be among the highest-ROI growth activities you could undertake.

Microsoft, for example, evaluates the precise performance of each of its payment service providers on a monthly basis. Between June 1 and October 1, Stripe delivered a meaningful increase in authorization rates for Microsoft using a combination of Adaptive Acceptance, card account updater, network tokens, and more. As a result, Microsoft is now routing a larger share of its payments through Stripe.

Gatwick Airport had been dealing with a string of failed payments, disputes, and customer complaints under its previous payment provider. After switching to Stripe, payment acceptance rose by 2.5 percentage points. Following an A/B test against its former payment provider, FICO implemented Stripe and saw a 1 percentage point increase in authorization rates. Telehealth company Ro saw a 2% increase in auth rates and a 3% decrease in dispute activity over the last 12 months with Stripe, resulting in tens of millions of dollars annually.

Most businesses are today operating in what we call low revenue mode, running on unoptimized payments infrastructure that’s leaking dollars left, right, and center through conversion, auth, and fraud prevention rates that should be so much better. High revenue mode looks like a checkout that adapts differently to each customer. You should be pricing your products in local currency, and offering the right set of the hundreds of local payment methods that are most relevant.

Presenting BLIK payments to your customers in Poland drives an average 46% increase in checkout conversion; offering Pix does the same for customers in Brazil, with a 31% average conversion uplift.

This is all powered by a decade-long investment in AI, including our Payments Foundation Model and AI-powered services like Stripe Radar, Optimized Checkout Suite, and Authorization Boost that quietly optimize billions of dollars of transaction volume every day.

Get your complimentary copy of the Forrester Wave(™) report to learn more.

Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.