Which payment provider for which country

Two different questions (read this first)

• Where your business is registered or based decides whether you can open your own Stripe account. This is the question the “Connect with Stripe” button depends on: the button signs you in to Stripe or helps you create your account there (Stripe: connect an existing account, read 2026-10-23), and Stripe only opens accounts in the countries on its list.
• Where your customers are decides which payment methods they can use. Stripe lists, for each method, both the countries a business must be in and the country the customer must be in (Stripe: payment method support, read 2026-10-23). Example: UPI (India’s instant bank payment) can be accepted by Stripe accounts in 35 listed countries, from customers in India (Stripe: UPI, read 2026-10-23). A shop in Germany can take UPI. A shop in India cannot open a Stripe account that way today (see the India row).

If you are in … do this

• Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt: none is on Stripe’s list of countries, so you cannot open your own Stripe account there. Look at the local gateway in the table below (Khalti, Safepay, SSLCOMMERZ, Paymob).
• Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe: use Pesapal. It is built into Serenities.
• Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire: Stripe lists these as “Extended network”, not as normal countries. Treat Stripe as not confirmed for you and look at Paystack (see the table).
• India: Stripe lists India as “Preview” (contact sales). Look at Razorpay unless Stripe has already opened your account.
• United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, most of Europe, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates and the others on Stripe’s list: use Stripe.
• Any other country: see “Countries not covered here” near the end.
• You can mix. One site can take cards through Stripe and M-Pesa through Pesapal at the same time.

What Serenities has today and what it does not

• Stripe: built in. “Connect with Stripe” connects your own account. Which payment methods checkout shows is decided by that account’s own Stripe dashboard (Settings > Payment methods), so you switch on local methods there (for example UPI, iDEAL, Pix, bank debits) and checkout shows each to the customers it fits by country, amount and currency. The Payments tab says this for a site connected with Stripe, with a link to those settings.
• Pesapal: built in for Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Pesapal’s own site also lists these seven countries (Pesapal, read 2026-10-23).
• Bank transfer or cash: built in, in every country. Your buyer asks to pay by hand and you approve each payment on the Payments tab; no gateway is involved.
• Every other provider on this page (Paystack, Razorpay, Khalti, Safepay, SSLCOMMERZ, Paymob, Flutterwave): not built in. You can add one yourself, or ask the AI assistant in your app to connect it: it can write a custom function that takes the payment and then grants access (see Payment Providers). That route has not been tried with each provider named here. A simple “Add your provider” screen is planned, not built. Do not count on a provider here as “supported” until it is built in.

The table

“Stripe: yes” means the country is in the plain list on https://stripe.com/global (read 2026-10-23). The page marks five countries “Extended network” and two “Preview”, and does not say in plain words what those labels mean for a business, so those rows say “not confirmed”. A provider other than Stripe or Pesapal in the last column is one to look at, not one that is built in.

“Most of Europe” means the European countries in the plain list on https://stripe.com/global: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

Stripe’s full plain list (read 2026-10-23): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.

One more route: a company in a Stripe country

Stripe Atlas helps a founder “start a US company from anywhere in the world”: it forms a Delaware company, gets its tax number, and lets it take Stripe payments (Stripe Atlas docs and Atlas sign-up, read 2026-10-23). It costs 500 USD to set up and 100 USD a year after the first year (Stripe Atlas, read 2026-10-23).

Things to know before you think of it as an answer: Atlas has restricted business categories; it asks for a US phone number and, for the tax number to arrive fast, a US Social Security number (without one the tax number takes 10 to 35 business days); and the money sits in the US company, so there are tax and legal duties in your own country. Whether founders from a particular country can use Atlas is not verified: Stripe’s pages do not list countries. Talk to a lawyer or accountant first. Serenities does not advise on this.

Countries not covered here

This page does not cover, and no gateway has been researched for: Latin America outside Brazil and Mexico (for example Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru), the Middle East outside the United Arab Emirates (for example Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel), the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Central Asia. They are not on Stripe’s plain list. Stripe is not available there and no provider has been checked for that country yet. You (or your AI) can look for a local gateway and have it set up as a custom function.

Notes on what Stripe offers

• Stripe’s payment-method list has cards, bank debits, bank redirects, bank transfers, buy-now-pay-later, real-time payments, vouchers and wallets (Stripe: payment methods, read 2026-10-23). It has no M-Pesa, mobile money, Khalti, bKash, Easypaisa or JazzCash.
• Stripe lists Alipay and WeChat Pay for Chinese customers, for businesses in listed countries only (Stripe: payment method support, read 2026-10-23).
• Paying out to someone in another country (marketplaces) is a different Stripe product and is not what a shop owner needs: https://docs.stripe.com/connect/cross-border-payouts.

What could not be read, and what to double-check

• Paystack’s pages and Flutterwave’s country page blocked or missed the reader: no Paystack fact on this page comes from Paystack itself. Check https://paystack.com/countries before you count on it for your country.
• What “Extended network” and “Preview” mean for a business is not on the Stripe page. A search found Paystack pages that say Stripe operates in Nigeria and South Africa through them, but those pages could not be opened. If you are in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya or Cote d’Ivoire, ask Stripe or Paystack whether “Connect with Stripe” will work for you.
• Pesapal’s mobile money coverage outside Kenya; Safepay and SSLCOMMERZ sign-up rules; Paymob’s countries; Khalti’s card support; Razorpay’s rules for foreign businesses: all not verified.
• Fees were not researched and are not given here.