Compare
Synapto vs Stripe Connect, for UK software platforms
Stripe Connect is the best-known way to put payments inside software. This page is for platforms whose customers already take payments somewhere else, and who want to know which route actually gets them onto yours.
The short answer
Stripe Connect gives a software platform a payment rail and components that its own team integrates, launches and persuades customers to adopt. Synapto works the other way round: we move the customers already on your software onto your payments, in your name. Our regulated acquiring partner holds the funds.
How Stripe Connect and Synapto compare
| Synapto | Stripe Connect | |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds the funds | Our regulated acquiring partner holds the funds and the licences. Synapto is not a payment institution and never holds your customers' money. | Stripe, under its own licences. In the UK, Stripe Payments UK Ltd is an FCA-authorised electronic money institution (FRN 900461). |
| Account types and onboarding | Your customers sign up inside your product under your brand, through hosted or embedded onboarding; our partner runs the checks behind it. | Standard, Express or Custom, now marked legacy in favour of controller properties. Stripe owns onboarding on Standard and Express; on Custom the platform can own it. |
| How the platform earns | On the payments your customers take, agreed in the payments review. Our published standard rate is for businesses, not platforms. | Either Stripe prices your users and you earn only as a qualifying partner, or you price them and pay Stripe £2 per monthly active account plus 0.25% + 10p per payout. |
| UK Direct Debit | Native, alongside cards, on one statement | Bacs Direct Debit through destination charges. Statements show Stripe unless Custom Branding is added at £50 a month per account. |
| Payouts | Paid to each customer's own bank account by our regulated acquiring partner, on a schedule you set or on demand | UK default of 3 business days (7 calendar days for the first payout). Instant Payouts at 1% of payout volume. |
| Tap to Pay and in person | Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android, plus card terminals, on the same account as online and Direct Debit | Tap to Pay on iPhone is available in the UK through the Terminal SDK, after Apple's entitlement and app review. Terminal readers work with Connect. |
| Support | A named person you can phone | Shared between the platform and Stripe on Standard and Express; the platform provides all of it on Custom. |
| Who moves your existing customers | We run it, in your name, with you | The platform. Stripe imports saved card data on request; persuading each customer to switch is your job. |
Stripe Connect pricing checked against their public pricing page on 20 October 2026. Tell us if it's changed.
When Stripe Connect is the better choice
If most of your customers are new sign-ups rather than businesses already taking payments elsewhere, there are no existing customers to move, and Stripe Connect's hosted onboarding and embedded components get a new customer taking payments with very little from you. The same is true if you have your own payments lead who wants to own the product, the pricing and the adoption work, and would rather have a self-serve rail than a partner.
We are built for UK platforms with an existing base on other providers, where the hard part is not the rail but getting those customers onto it. If that is not your situation, Stripe Connect may well be the right call, and we would rather tell you so on the first call.
Comparing what each route costs and earns
There is no worked example with numbers here, on purpose. Our platform pricing is agreed in the payments review, the call where we look at your customers and their payments together, rather than published, so any example would show Stripe's side in full and ours as a guess.
What can be compared is how the money moves. On Stripe Connect, where you price your users yourself, Stripe's published charges to the platform are £2 per monthly active account plus 0.25% + 10p per payout, checked on 20 October 2026. Those are costs your platform carries on top of card processing and recovers from the price you charge.
With Synapto, each of your customers is settled in full to its own bank account. Its payment fees are billed monthly on one statement, and your margin, the difference between the price your customers pay and our rate, is paid to you monthly. Your platform is never in the flow of funds. To compare the two, take the same group of customers, work out what each route leaves your platform after every charge, and bring both figures to the payments review.
The real difference: who does the adoption work
The rail is the smaller job
Both routes give you a way to take payments inside your product. Neither one, on its own, moves a customer who already takes payments somewhere else.
With Stripe Connect
Your team builds the integration, sets the pricing, writes the switch messaging and works through your base customer by customer.
With Synapto
Your developer builds against our SDK with a payments engineer on hand. We plan how each group of customers moves and run it in your name.
What to ask either of us
Who holds the money, who your customers contract with, who sets the price, and who is doing the work of moving the customers you already have.
What platforms ask about Stripe Connect
Usually, yes, and it starts with what you have today: which account types, how many active customers, which of them use Direct Debit and saved cards. We look at that in the payments review and tell you plainly whether moving is worth it, or whether staying put is the better answer.
No. Our regulated acquiring partner is the regulated party, holds the licences and holds the funds. We work on top of it with you. Our guide to payfac or referral sets out the models side by side.
Less so. If there is no existing base to move, the adoption work we do matters less, and Stripe Connect's hosted onboarding may be all you need. The section above on when Connect is the better choice is meant seriously.
Your developer, against our SDK and documentation, with a test environment and a payments engineer answering questions while they build. It runs on your developer's schedule, so we never put a date on it.
Put your own numbers into the pricing calculator for a range, then bring them to a payments review. For what the term covers, see embedded payments in the glossary.
Usually, through Stripe's export of card data to another PCI DSS compliant provider. Check where the data sits first: on Standard accounts it belongs to each customer's own Stripe account, so who can ask for the export differs by account type. We handle the receiving side.
Check whose service user number they were collected under, as that decides whether they can transfer or need customers to sign again. We confirm which applies before any customer moves.
Each customer is settled in full to its own bank account by our regulated acquiring partner, next working day as standard or faster for an extra 1% of the amount paid out. The table above sets out Stripe's UK defaults for comparison.
Yes. Customers move in groups, and those not yet moved carry on as they are. If you signed custom pricing with Stripe, check it for a term or committed volume before you plan the last group.
Sources
Every Stripe figure on this page comes from Stripe's own public pages, checked on 20 October 2026: Connect UK pricing, Connect overview, connected account types, Bacs Direct Debit, payouts, Tap to Pay on iPhone, Terminal with Connect, payments data import and Stripe Payments UK authorised services. If any of it has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
Find out which route fits your platform
Bring your rough numbers and your current providers. We will tell you what moving your existing customers is worth, how it would run, and whether Stripe Connect is the better answer.