Stripe and PayPal revenue together

Updated 2026-08-04

This pairing is less glamorous than the others and more common than anyone admits. Stripe is the modern processor you chose deliberately. PayPal is the one that's still quietly collecting money from a checkout link you set up in 2021, a long-standing customer who never switched, or invoices from consulting work.

The forgotten-revenue problem

PayPal revenue tends to be invisible for a specific reason: it isn't part of the system you think of as "the business". It arrives in a different account, on a different schedule, and you check it when you remember.

For a lot of solo founders that's a few hundred dollars a month — real money, completely unmonitored, and absent from every number they quote about their own business.

What each side contributes

The MRR caveat matters here. If you run genuine subscriptions through PayPal — some businesses do, particularly older ones — those will not appear in your True MRR figure. FRGMNT reads PayPal as cash only.

If PayPal subscriptions are a meaningful part of your recurring revenue, know that the MRR number is incomplete. If PayPal is legacy one-offs and invoices, cash is exactly the right place for it.

Setting it up

Stripe wants a restricted key. PayPal wants a REST app client ID and secret scoped to reporting — deny payouts and refunds while you're in there.

Both are stored in your device Keychain.

The realistic benefit

Not a sophisticated analytics story. Just: you stop forgetting about a revenue stream, and the number you quote for "what the business makes" becomes true.

That's worth more than it sounds. Most founders discover their PayPal balance is larger than they assumed the first time they actually look.