The question comes up in almost every online store project: “Which payment method should I use?” What it usually means is: “What won’t lose me customers at the checkout?” The answer isn’t one payment provider, it’s understanding who buys from your store and how they’re used to paying.
Stripe: international and developer-friendly
Stripe is the world’s most widely used payments platform, for good reason. Card payments work smoothly from any country, the documentation is clear, and integration is fast even for a small team. If your customer base is international or you’re planning to expand beyond the Baltics, Stripe is the natural choice.
Stripe is especially strong for recurring payments and subscription-based business models: software services, memberships, subscriptions. Billing logic, retrying failed payments and invoicing are already built into Stripe, not something you have to piece together yourself.
Fees are usually a percentage of the transaction amount plus a small fixed fee per transaction. But there’s an important downside for Estonian buyers: card payment isn’t everyone’s favourite method here. Some customers look for the bank logo in the checkout and leave if they don’t find it.
Montonio: Baltic-focused and familiar
Montonio is built specifically for the Baltic market, and it shows. Bank links feel familiar and trustworthy to shoppers because they look exactly like everyday online banking. The customer doesn’t need to create a new account or enter card details. Beyond bank links, Montonio also offers instalment and buy-now-pay-later options, which have become increasingly common in Estonian stores, especially for bigger purchases.
Integration is straightforward on most popular store platforms, which have ready-made plugins. Fees tend to be lower than international card payments, though the exact structure depends on the contract and volume.
Montonio’s weakness is the flip side of its strength: if a large share of your customers are outside the Baltics and don’t have an Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian bank, they won’t recognise the bank link and it becomes friction instead of convenience.
A bank link direct from the bank or another provider
Bank links can also be integrated directly with the banks (Swedbank, SEB, LHV and others) or through another local payment provider. A bank link is especially strong with an older or more local customer base who don’t want to enter card details online but do trust their bank. It’s a low-friction path: two or three clicks and the payment is done, without having to remember or type anything.
The downside is the same as Montonio’s: it only works well for a customer with an Estonian (or broadly Baltic) online bank. It simply doesn’t apply to tourists, foreign visitors or an international B2B customer.
So what should you actually pick?
The question isn’t “which is best”, it’s “which fits my customers”. A few simple guidelines:
- Mostly Estonian customers, one-off purchases: bank link or Montonio first, Stripe as a secondary option for card payments.
- International customer base: Stripe as the main method, a local bank link added for Baltic customers.
- Subscription business or SaaS: Stripe, because recurring payment and billing support is the most mature.
- Bigger purchases (furniture, electronics, services): Montonio with instalments, which lowers the threshold for the buying decision.
Most well-performing Estonian online stores don’t pick just one, they offer two or three together: bank link or Montonio first, card payment second. Every additional, familiar option at checkout reduces the chance that a purchase gets abandoned.
Integration effort
All three have ready-made plugins for the popular store platforms, so the basic integration is usually a matter of a couple of days, not a weeks-long project. It gets more involved when custom development is needed: special payment plans, multi-currency support, or your own order management that doesn’t run on an off-the-shelf setup. In that case it’s worth choosing the payment method before the rest of the store’s architecture is locked in, since retrofitting it later is far more expensive.
If you need to decide which combination of payment methods fits your store, see what my payments and billing systems services cover, or write to me briefly about who your customers are and what you sell today. I’ll tell you honestly which combination makes sense for you.
