Stripe vs PayPal for Tour Operators: A Caribbean Take

A tour company in the Caribbean, often with a Canadian, American or European owner, wants to take payments online, finds out their island isn't supported for a local Stripe account, and opens a bank account in another country so they can sign up there. I keep seeing it, and I suspect most of those owners never compared Stripe vs PayPal. They just went with the name they knew.

So a guest pays for a tour online, and the money goes overseas before it comes home. A foreign bank account or company isn't automatically illegal or against Stripe's rules. But the account alone isn't enough: Stripe also requires a qualifying business setup in that country, and misstating where the business operates is its own problem. Even so, I don't see how the bookkeeping and tax side stays clean with that detour. To me it looks dodgy. That's my opinion, not a legal finding.

Stripe vs PayPal on fees, at the standard US rate

These are the standard US online rates as published today. They change and vary by country, so check your own country's pricing page first.

• Stripe: 2.9% + 30 cents for a domestic card. Add 1.5% for an international card, and another 1% if a currency conversion is needed.
• PayPal Checkout (the yellow button): 3.49% + 49 cents.
• PayPal card payments: 2.99% + 49 cents for standard card processing, or 2.89% + 29 cents on the advanced card setup. International transactions add 1.5%.

A visitor's card may count as international, depending on where it was issued and where your processor account is based. On a $1,200 private charter paid with a domestic card, Stripe costs $35.10, PayPal advanced cards $34.97, standard cards $36.37 and Checkout $42.37. An extra 1.5% for an international card is $18. That's the line that bites.

How fast the money lands

Stripe's standard US settlement is two business days, though your payout schedule and bank decide when it lands. Your very first payout takes longer, typically 7 to 14 days, and Stripe says that wait can't be waived. Eligible accounts can use Instant Payouts for 1.5% with a 50 cent minimum.

PayPal puts the money in your PayPal balance, and you move it to your bank. A standard transfer to a linked US bank is free and takes 1 to 3 business days. Instant transfers exist, for a fee.

Two business days is fine in high season. The first payout wait is the one to plan for, so sign up well before your first busy week.

Disputes, refunds and who eats the loss

Charters and tours get disputes. I was a captain running tours and charters for cruise ship and hotel guests around St. Maarten, so I'll say it plainly: a missed boat is the classic setup for a dispute. The cruise passenger calls their bank instead of you. In both systems, if you lose the dispute, you carry the loss, not the processor.

• Stripe: $15 when a dispute comes in, and another $15 if you respond to fight it. You get the second fee back if you win. You don't get it back if you lose.
• PayPal: a standard dispute fee of $15, which rises to $30 if your dispute volume is high. PayPal says it reimburses the standard fee if you appeal and win. Card chargebacks through PayPal can carry a $20 chargeback fee.

PayPal's US Seller Protection can cover eligible services for item-not-received and unauthorized-payment claims, if you have evidence and meet other conditions. It excludes item-not-received chargebacks filed directly with the card issuer, and a guest who says the snorkel spot was "not as described" isn't covered either. So keep your check-in records.

Refunds are close to a tie. Neither one charges you to refund a card payment, and neither gives back the processing fee from the original charge. Refund a $500 deposit for a blown-out day and you're still down the fee. So offer a reschedule first.

What the guest sees at checkout

PayPal's real advantage is trust. A guest booking a small boat company on an island they've never visited may feel safer tapping a button they recognize than typing a card number into an unknown site.

Stripe can keep the card form on your booking page, though it also offers hosted checkout.

Bokun, for example, supports both Stripe and PayPal. Whatever software you use, check which one it supports and who handles payment problems when something breaks.

The Caribbean reality check

This is where the fee comparison stops mattering. As of this month, Stripe's global availability page and its outlying-territories support page say this:

• Stripe supports: Puerto Rico (as a US business), and French Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe and Martinique (signed up as France).
• Stripe doesn't support: the US Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Dutch Sint Maarten, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Saba, Sint Eustatius or St. Barts. Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and the rest of the independent islands aren't on the list either.

So on my own island, the French side can open Stripe and the Dutch side can't.

PayPal is available in far more Caribbean countries, but receiving money and getting it into a local bank are two different things.

• Bahamas, Cayman, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic: PayPal's Payouts developer docs list these as send, receive and withdraw. That doesn't confirm merchant checkout eligibility or which local banks you can link.
• Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos: you can receive payments, but PayPal's agreement sends the balance on a schedule to a linked US bank account or Visa credit card, with an initial 30-day hold that PayPal may waive. Nothing in it promises a payout to your local bank.
• Anguilla, Aruba, the BVI, Montserrat, St. Vincent and the old Netherlands Antilles listing: PayPal's older country table isn't enough to say what merchants can receive or withdraw today.

PayPal's own help pages say to log in and check what your account can do in your country. Do that before you build around it.

Where the money lands is the real question

Back to the owners with the overseas bank accounts. They didn't have a fee problem. They had a "where does the money go" problem, and their fix makes every bookkeeping and tax conversation harder.

For most Caribbean operators, the question isn't which brand is cheaper. It's whether the money can land in your local bank legitimately. That's why we built JB Pay into Junglebee, with payouts going by wire to the operator's local island bank twice a month. Whatever you choose, start from your bank and work backwards.