Adyen

Adyen has grown from a Dutch startup founded in 2006 into one of the world's most influential payment technology companies. Listed on Euronext Amsterdam since 2018, the company processes payments for household names including Uber, Spotify, eBay, Microsoft, and McDonald's. What sets Adyen apart from most payment processors is its single-platform architecture: rather than stitching together acquisitions and third-party services, every component of the Adyen stack -- from gateway to risk engine to settlement -- was built in-house on a unified codebase.

This unified approach is not just a technical curiosity. It means that a transaction flowing through Adyen touches fewer systems, reducing latency and failure points. For merchants processing millions of transactions daily, even a fraction-of-a-percent improvement in authorization rates translates into significant revenue gains. Adyen reported that its AI-powered optimization tools, launched in 2025, have delivered up to a 6% increase in transaction success rates for pilot customers including Patagonia, Indeed, and NordSecurity.

The Single-Platform Advantage

Most enterprise payment processors operate as a patchwork of acquired companies and services glued together through APIs. Stripe, for instance, expanded through acquisitions like Paystack (Africa) and TaxJar (tax compliance). Adyen took the opposite path. Its entire payment stack -- online payments, in-store POS terminals, risk management, issuing, and financial reporting -- runs on a single platform with a shared data layer. When a customer pays online and later returns an item in-store, the transaction data lives in one place, making reconciliation seamless.

This architecture also powers Adyen's real-time data capabilities. Merchants can view transaction data, conversion funnels, and risk metrics in a unified dashboard without waiting for nightly batch processes. The platform supports over 250 payment methods across more than 175 currencies, and local acquiring licenses in dozens of markets ensure that transactions are routed through the most efficient path.

RevenueProtect: Fraud Prevention Built Into the Stack

Adyen's fraud prevention system, RevenueProtect, is deeply integrated into the payment flow rather than bolted on as an afterthought. It uses machine learning to analyze transaction patterns in real time, drawing on data from the entire Adyen network. In 2025, the company enhanced RevenueProtect with AI-driven rule automation that reduced the need for manual fraud prevention rules by 86% among early adopters, with 35% of pilot customers eliminating manual rules entirely.

The system assigns risk scores to each transaction and can dynamically adjust thresholds based on merchant-specific patterns. Unlike standalone fraud tools like Riskified or Signifyd, RevenueProtect benefits from seeing the full transaction context -- including shopper authentication data, device fingerprints, and payment method details -- because it operates within the same platform that processes the payment. Adyen is PCI DSS Level 1 certified, the highest level of payment card security compliance.

In-Store and Omnichannel Payments

Adyen's point-of-sale (POS) terminals run the same platform as its online payments, creating a genuinely unified commerce experience. The company designs its own terminal hardware and software, which means firmware updates, security patches, and new payment method support roll out consistently across the fleet. Merchants can process tap-to-pay, chip-and-PIN, QR code payments, and mobile wallet transactions on Adyen terminals.

The omnichannel capability extends beyond simple payment acceptance. Adyen enables features like endless aisle (starting a transaction in-store and completing it online), buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS), and unified loyalty programs that recognize shoppers across channels. For enterprise retailers, this eliminates the common headache of maintaining separate online and in-store payment systems with disconnected data.

Adyen for Platforms and Marketplaces

Adyen for Platforms is the company's solution for marketplace businesses that need to split payments between multiple parties. It handles onboarding of sub-merchants, KYC verification, fund splitting, and payouts to sellers -- all within the Adyen ecosystem. Companies like eBay and Etsy use Adyen to manage payments across millions of sellers. The platform also supports embedded financial products: merchants can issue their own branded payment cards, offer business accounts, and provide lending products through Adyen's banking-as-a-service capabilities.

Pricing Structure

Adyen operates on a transparent interchange-plus pricing model rather than the bundled pricing common with Stripe and PayPal. Each transaction incurs a fixed processing fee (typically around EUR 0.11) plus a scheme fee that varies by payment method and region. There are no setup fees, monthly fees, or minimum volume commitments for the standard platform. However, Adyen is explicit that it targets mid-market and enterprise merchants -- the platform has historically required a minimum processing volume, though this threshold has been lowered in recent years to accommodate growing businesses.

For large enterprises, Adyen offers custom pricing with volume-based discounts and dedicated account management. The interchange-plus model tends to be more cost-effective at scale than Stripe's flat percentage fee, particularly for merchants processing high volumes of European card payments where interchange rates are capped by regulation.

Data Sovereignty and European Compliance

Adyen is headquartered in Amsterdam and listed on Euronext Amsterdam. The company operates data centers in Europe, and transaction data for European merchants is processed and stored within the EU. This is a significant differentiator compared to US-based processors like Stripe (San Francisco) or PayPal (San Jose), which are subject to US laws including the CLOUD Act that can compel disclosure of data stored overseas.

Adyen holds a full banking license from the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank), which means it is directly regulated as a financial institution under European banking supervision. This license enables Adyen to hold merchant funds in segregated accounts rather than relying on third-party banking partners, providing an extra layer of financial security. The company is fully GDPR compliant and has built its data practices around European privacy principles from the ground up.

Developer Experience and Integration

Adyen provides comprehensive SDKs and client libraries for major programming languages and platforms, including drop-in UI components for web, iOS, and Android. The API follows RESTful conventions with well-documented endpoints for payments, payouts, recurring billing, and reporting. While the developer documentation is thorough, Adyen's API is often considered more complex than Stripe's -- a trade-off that reflects the depth of enterprise features available.

The platform supports webhooks for real-time event notifications, test environments for sandbox development, and a management API for programmatic configuration. For enterprise customers, Adyen offers dedicated integration support teams and custom solution architecture consulting.

Who Should Choose Adyen

Adyen is best suited for mid-market to enterprise businesses with multi-channel operations, international payment needs, or complex marketplace models. If you process significant volume and need a unified platform that covers online payments, in-store POS, fraud prevention, and financial reporting without bolting together multiple vendors, Adyen delivers. Startups and small businesses may find the platform's complexity and historical enterprise focus less accessible than Stripe or Mollie, though Adyen has been expanding its reach downmarket.

For European businesses specifically, Adyen offers the rare combination of global scale and European governance. The company's Dutch banking license, Amsterdam headquarters, EU data processing, and GDPR-native design make it the strongest choice for organizations that need enterprise-grade payment processing without compromising on data sovereignty.