The $250 Million ThresholdWide moat
Adyen (ADYEN) — moat facet
The threshold defines the company: a few basis points is worth millions above it and nothing below it.
Adyen prices on interchange-plus from roughly 0.6% plus €0.11, against Stripe's headline 2.9% plus 30 cents and Braintree's 2.59% plus 49 cents. For most enterprises processing above about $250 million a year, Adyen is the lowest all-in cost1.
That threshold defines the company. Below it, the integration effort and account management Adyen provides cannot be justified by either side; above it, a few basis points is worth millions and a merchant will run a formal evaluation to capture them. So Adyen does not compete for the market its rivals count — it competes for the top of it, where decisions are made on measured cost and performance rather than on convenience.
The commercial consequence is a business with very few customers and very high revenue per customer, which is why Adyen's net margins near 45% are achievable at all: the cost of serving one merchant processing $5 billion is not fifty times the cost of serving one processing $100 million.
Watch processed volume per merchant. Rising means Adyen is winning larger accounts or its existing ones are growing — both good. Falling would mean it is reaching down-market, where the economics that produce those margins do not apply.
The pricing threshold that defines Adyen's addressable market has not moved: interchange-plus from roughly 0.6% plus EUR 0.11 beats the alternatives above about $250M of annual volume and is uneconomic below it. That is what produces very high revenue per customer and net margins near 45%.
The customers big enough to use every channel are the ones Adyen's pricing wins; this count rising is the threshold being crossed.
Source: Adyen H1 2026 Shareholder Letter ↗- Third-party estimateAdyen prices from ~0.6% + EUR 0.11 against Stripe's 2.9% + 30c and Braintree's 2.59% + 49c, and is the lowest all-in cost above roughly $250M of annual volume.Enterprise payment processing comparison, 2026 — Stripe holds roughly 34.07% of payment-management installations, PayPal about 31.66% and Adyen about 9.16%; Adyen prices on interchange-plus from around 0.6% plus EUR 0.11, Stripe at a default 2.9% plus 30 cents and Braintree at 2.59% plus 49 cents; for most enterprises processing more than $250 million annually Adyen is the lowest all-in cost; Stripe was built for developers, PayPal for consumers and Adyen for large enterprises, with Adyen winning the global omnichannel enterprise on a single financial stack rather than stitched-together acquirers, which is why it processes for merchants including Uber, Spotify, McDonald's and Microsoft; Checkout.com focuses on performance optimisation and international coverage, Worldpay provides extensive acquiring reach and enterprise solutions, and Braintree offers wallet integration within the PayPal ecosystem — 2026 · publ. 2026 · source ↗