Connect Stripe and take your first payment

1. Create your account and stay in test mode

Sign up at stripe.com. Everything starts in test mode, where no real money moves. Build and test your whole payment flow here first.

2. Create your products and prices

Add a product for each thing you sell and a price for each way it can be paid, such as monthly and yearly. Your app refers to these price IDs when it starts a checkout.

3. Use Stripe Checkout

Let Stripe host the payment page. It handles cards, wallets, tax and fraud checks, and you never touch card numbers. Your app sends the customer to Checkout and Stripe sends them back to a success page.

4. Add a webhook

Stripe tells your app about payments through a webhook: a URL on your app that Stripe calls when something happens. Use it to unlock access after payment and remove it after a cancellation or refund. Copy the webhook's signing secret into your app's server settings so it can check each message really came from Stripe. The success page alone is not enough, because people close tabs.

5. Test it

Pay with Stripe's test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future date and any CVC. Then test a declined card, a cancellation and a refund, and check that access changes each time.

6. Go live

1. Activate your Stripe account with your business and bank details.
2. Recreate your products and prices in live mode.
3. Swap in your live keys and live price IDs.
4. Add a live webhook with its own signing secret.
5. Make one real purchase with your own card, then refund it.