How Stripe, Adyen, and Square Are Reshaping Global Commerce

The payments infrastructure layer is consolidating around a few major players. Stripe leads online payments, Adyen dominates enterprise (Meta, Uber, Spotify), and Square (Block) owns in-person card present. PayPal remains the largest but is losing ground. New entrant: Braintree (PayPal) still relevant. The convergence: every player is expanding from payments to full financial services (banking, lending, risk management). The winner-take-most dynamics: merchants want one platform for all payment needs. Revenue from payments processing exceeds $200B globally with 2-3% margins on $8T+ in transaction volume.