Pick Stripe if your offer fits its rules and you want to take cards today: it is the processor and the account in one, with no monthly fee. Pick NMI if you sell supplements, trials or anything a processor calls high-risk, or run more than one merchant account. Authorize.net suits a business that already has a bank merchant account and wants a long-standing gateway in front of it.
For funnels, one difference outweighs the fees. On ElasticFunnels, one-click upsells work on Stripe and NMI but not on Authorize.net, and splitting sales across merchant accounts works only on NMI.
We make ElasticFunnels, a funnel builder that connects to all three, and we are not a payment processor. Every Stripe, Authorize.net and NMI fact below comes from their own websites, opened on 20 October 2026, with links. What ElasticFunnels does on each gateway comes from our own product records.
Stripe vs Authorize.net vs NMI: what each one is
The three are often compared as if they were the same kind of company. They are not, and the difference decides who approves you.
- Stripe is a payment processor that gives you an account under its own: sign up, pass its checks and take cards. Stripe decides which businesses it accepts.
- Authorize.net is a payment gateway. It sells a package that includes a merchant account, or a gateway-only plan for a merchant account you already have from a bank or processor.
- NMI is a gateway too, sold through resellers, ISOs and software companies rather than to merchants directly. It says it connects to more than 150 processors, so the MID behind it can come from almost any of them, high-risk processors included.
Stripe vs Authorize.net vs NMI at a glance
| Checked 20 Oct 2026 | Stripe | Authorize.net | NMI |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Processor with its own account | Gateway, merchant account optional | Gateway, sold through partners |
| Card rate (US) | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.9% + 30¢ with its merchant account, or 10¢ gateway-only plus your account's rate | Not published; set by your reseller |
| Monthly fee | None | $25 | Not published |
| Other per-use fees | +1.5% international cards, +1% currency conversion, $15 per dispute | 10¢ daily batch fee on the gateway-only plan | Not published |
| Supplements, trials, high risk | Restricted list applies | Depends on the merchant account | Depends on the merchant account |
| Saved cards for later charges | Yes | Yes, Customer Profiles | Yes, through its vault |
Sources: Stripe pricing (US page), Authorize.net pricing, Authorize.net Customer Profiles, nmi.com. Merchant accounts behind Authorize.net or NMI add their own rates, reserves and fees, which vary by processor and by offer.
Supplements, trials and high-risk offers
This is where most funnel sellers make the choice without noticing. Stripe's restricted businesses list prohibits, among others:
- "Pseudo-pharmaceuticals or nutraceuticals that are not safe or make harmful claims";
- "Negative option marketing, negative option membership clubs and reduced price trials with unclear or hidden pricing";
- "Businesses that make outrageous claims", and "get rich quick" schemes.
A clean supplement with plain pricing can fit. An offer with a trial that turns into a subscription, bold health claims or a high chargeback rate is a risk on Stripe, because Stripe can close the account and hold funds under its own terms. That is why so many supplement and nutra sellers run on merchant accounts from high-risk processors, with a gateway like NMI in front. The CBD and nutra MIDs guide covers how those accounts are underwritten.
Authorize.net sits in between: with its own package, the merchant account underwriting decides; with the gateway-only plan, your own processor does.
Do one-click upsells work on Authorize.net?
On Authorize.net itself, a card can be stored for later charges through Customer Profiles. Whether a one-click upsell works depends on the funnel platform in front of it.
On ElasticFunnels it does not, today. An upsell after an Authorize.net checkout still works, but the shopper enters the card again. One-click upsells and downsells that charge the saved card work on Stripe, NMI and PayPal. If upsells carry a big share of your revenue, that alone points you to Stripe or NMI.
How each gateway runs on ElasticFunnels
ElasticFunnels connects to Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna and Authorize.net. Here is what changes from one gateway to the next:
| On ElasticFunnels | Stripe | Authorize.net | NMI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checkout with order bumps | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| One-click upsells and downsells | Yes | No, the card is entered again | Yes |
| Apple Pay and Google Pay | Yes | No | Yes |
| Refunds from ElasticFunnels | Yes | Yes, voids too | Yes |
| MID routing across merchant accounts | No | No | Yes |
MID routing on NMI. First sales split by weight across your NMI MIDs, filtered by card brand, product and amount, with a daily cap per MID. Upsells and rebills stay on the MID that stored the card, because the card lives there. The what is a MID guide explains why several accounts help.
Subscriptions are billed by ElasticFunnels itself, on the schedule you set, and charged through the gateway that took the first order. There is no Stripe Billing sync to manage.
The fee: 0.5% on orders through an EF-run gateway, on top of what the gateway and the merchant account charge. Setup for each is on the Stripe, Authorize.net and NMI integration pages.
Stripe or NMI for a supplement offer with upsells?
Start from the offer, then the funnel. If your supplement makes modest claims, sells at a clear price and your chargebacks are low, Stripe is the fastest way to take cards, and one-click upsells work on it. If the offer uses a trial, makes strong claims, or will scale past what one account can carry, get a high-risk merchant account and run it on NMI. You keep one-click upsells and gain the option to add a second and third MID later and split first sales across them.
Plenty of sellers do both: Stripe for a low-risk product line, NMI for the main offer. On ElasticFunnels each domain, funnel or checkout picks its own merchant.
Which one to pick
- Stripe if you want to take cards today, your offer sits clearly inside its rules, and you sell one product line through one account.
- NMI if you sell supplements, trials or other high-risk offers, or you run several MIDs and want first sales split across them.
- Authorize.net if your bank already gives you a merchant account, your funnel has no upsell after the checkout, or you need its long track record with banks and accountants.
- Read Stripe's restricted list against your actual sales page, the claims and the trial terms, before you build on it.
- Count upsell revenue before you pick a gateway. If more than a small share comes after the checkout, re-entering the card costs more than any rate difference.
- Plan for the second MID early on NMI. Adding an account is easier while volume is low than after a processor starts asking questions.
- Price NMI through more than one reseller. Its gateway fees are not public, so quotes vary.
Stripe, Authorize.net and NMI each move the money well. For a funnel seller the questions that matter are whether the processor accepts the offer and whether the upsells stay one click, and those two answers usually make the choice for you.
