Payment isn't plumbing — it's conversion. The gateways you offer decide who can buy and how smoothly they can pay, and the fees decide how much of each sale you keep. Ritsbo stores connect Stripe in one click — here's how to choose the right gateways for your store in 2026.
A payment gateway is the service that processes a customer's card (or wallet, or bank transfer) and moves the money to you. Choosing one feels technical, but the decision comes down to three things: does it let your customers pay how they want, does it convert well, and does it leave you enough margin after fees. Get those three right and the rest is configuration.
Why Payment Choice Drives Conversion
The single most overlooked conversion lever is payment method breadth. A shopper who reaches checkout and doesn't see their preferred way to pay bounces. Offering cards + PayPal lifts conversion 15–30% over cards alone; adding Apple Pay and Google Pay on mobile lifts it further; adding buy-now-pay-later on $50+ carts lifts it again. Every method you add is a segment of customers you stop losing.
The reverse is also true — a store offering only a single card form, on mobile, with no autofill, is asking the customer to type 16 digits on a phone keyboard. That checkout converts terribly. Payment UX is conversion UX.
Stripe: The Default Choice
Stripe is the best default for almost every new store. It accepts Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, Discover, Apple Pay, and Google Pay out of the box, charges a flat 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction with no monthly or setup fee, and integrates with nearly every e-commerce platform including Ritsbo. Its developer experience and dashboard are best-in-class, and it supports 135+ currencies and most countries.
Stripe's strengths: instant onboarding (often live the same day), transparent pricing, built-in fraud detection (Radar), and a clean API for custom checkouts. Its weakness: it's strict on risk and occasionally holds funds for high-risk stores or sudden volume spikes. If you sell in a flagged category (CBD, certain supplements, high chargeback risk), check Stripe's restricted-business list before relying on it.
PayPal: The Trust Multiplier
PayPal is the second gateway every store should add. A meaningful share of shoppers — especially in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia — prefer PayPal and will abandon a checkout that doesn't offer it. PayPal's pricing matches Stripe (2.9% + 30¢ domestic, higher cross-border) and its one-tap checkout returns logged-in PayPal users in seconds.
Pair Stripe with PayPal and you cover the vast majority of customers: cards for everyone, wallets for mobile, PayPal for the PayPal-preferring segment. This combination is the standard for stores on Ritsbo and Shopify-alike platforms. Adding PayPal typically pays for its fees many times over in recovered conversions.
Buy-Now-Pay-Later: Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm
Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) lets a customer split a purchase into 4 interest-free payments (usually 25% at checkout, then 25% every two weeks). Providers include Klarna (Europe/US), Afterpay (US/Australia), and Affirm (US, larger purchases). You're paid upfront; the BNPL provider takes the customer's default risk and charges you a fee — typically 5–6% + 30¢, higher than cards.
The conversion and AOV lift justifies the higher fee for many stores: BNPL typically lifts conversion 20–30% and average order value 15–45% on eligible carts, with the biggest impact on products $50–1000. It particularly helps younger shoppers and higher-ticket items where the 4-payment split makes the purchase feel affordable. If your products are $50+ and your margins can absorb the fee, offer BNPL. Stripe supports Klarna and Afterpay directly, so adding it is often a checkbox, not an integration.
Understanding the Fees
The headline fee is 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction, but the real cost depends on what you actually sell. Cross-border transactions (customer in one country, you in another) add ~1%. Currency conversion adds ~1%. Chargebacks cost $15–25 each, win or lose. And BNPL fees run 5–6% + 30¢. A store selling internationally with BNPL can see effective payment costs of 8–10% of revenue — a real margin consideration.
Higher-volume stores can negotiate interchange-plus pricing (2.4% + 10¢ + interchange) once they process $50k+/month, which beats flat-rate for larger average orders. But don't optimize pricing before you have volume — the difference at low volume is negligible, and onboarding friction with a cheaper processor can cost more than it saves.
International and Local Payment Methods
If you sell outside your home country, local payment methods matter. In the Netherlands, iDEAL dominates; in Germany, SEPA and Sofort; in Brazil, Pix; in China, Alipay and WeChat Pay. Stripe and PayPal cover many of these, but some require a local gateway. The rule: add a local method when you see real demand from a country (10+ orders/month), not speculatively.
Currency matters too. Let customers pay in their local currency with dynamic conversion, and price in local currency on the product page. A customer who sees euros at checkout after browsing in dollars feels surprised — and surprise at checkout is the conversion killer.
Fraud, Chargebacks, and Holds
Payment gateways protect themselves first. If your chargeback rate exceeds ~1% or your fraud signals spike, a gateway may hold funds, freeze your account, or terminate you. Use the fraud tools the gateway provides — Stripe Radar, PayPal Seller Protection, Address Verification (AVS), CVV checks — and ship to billing addresses for high-risk orders. Read your gateway's acceptable-use policy before you start, especially if you sell in a borderline category.
Dispute chargebacks you can win: gather tracking proof, delivery confirmation, and customer communication, and submit within the gateway's window. A 60%+ chargeback win rate is achievable with disciplined evidence collection, and each win returns the full amount plus the chargeback fee.
The Right Setup for Most Stores
For a new consumer store in 2026, the optimal first-year setup is: Stripe for cards and wallet payments, PayPal as the second gateway, and BNPL enabled through Stripe if your average order is $50+. That covers the overwhelming majority of shoppers, converts well, and keeps fees predictable. Add local methods as specific country demand emerges.
Choose gateways for conversion first, fees second. A 2.9% fee on a sale is a small cost; a sale lost to a missing payment method is the entire sale. Ritsbo's payment setup makes this default: Stripe in one click, PayPal alongside, BNPL available — so your checkout converts from day one instead of leaking customers to payment friction.