How to Connect Stripe to your Website

Stripe is a financial service and software that makes a payment infrastructure specially designed for the internet.

Available to companies big and small, it can be integrated to accept payments, send payouts, and manage their businesses online.

Stripe combines the payment gateway with the payment processor. 

The best part about Stripe is that your customers do not need to have or make a Stripe account in order to pay through them, unlike services like PayPal.

Customers can simply just input their card information.

Another perk to integrating Stripe is that your website does not need to store any customer cards, which means you don’t need to worry about PCI compliance.

Stripe takes care of that for you. 

There are a few different options when integrating Stripe.

You can simply integrate Stripe’s checkout, or you can create your own custom form through Stripe.

The best part about creating a custom form is that you can make it look more like the rest of your own site.

This will be more familiar to the customers.

However, integrating Stripe Checkout is easier and quicker.

Integrating Stripe Checkout into Your Website

Stripe Checkout is the quickest way to build a payment form that is conversion-optimized.

Here's how to set up Stripe Checkout:

1. Create a Stripe account. This can be done by going to stripe.com and clicking the “Start now” on the homepage. You’ll be prompted to input your email address, full name, country, and the password you will use to sign in to your account in the future.
2. Activate your Stripe Account. At this point, you will need to input information about your business. This includes your business structure, details, fulfillment details, bank details, and your personal details as the business representative. You can then activate your account and start using it.
3. Connect via API. In your Stripe account settings, you will find your API keys. These will be used to connect your website to Stripe. There will be two keys for this method, the secret key, and the publishable key. Depending on the CMS you use for your website, these will be copied and pasted to the appropriate area to make the connection. Usually, in CMS's with addons like WordPress, you will have already downloaded the Stripe widget, or it's equivalent for other CMS's like Squarespace.
4. Schedule Stripe Payouts. Once set up, you can then schedule Stripe payouts to your bank account of choice in your Stripe account settings or via any Stripe addon or widget you use on your website. You can then change the payout schedule to every day, week, or month automatically, or you can change it to be paid out manually when you want. You can see the transaction history on your own website admin page and your Stripe account page. 

Integrating Custom Payment Flow with Stripe

Integrating a custom payment flow on your website using Stripe is a bit more complex than Stripe Checkout.

With this option, you’re essentially building your own code for your website.

If you’re not sure how to do this, you can easily contact Stripe to help you. 

Custom payment flow allows you to embed a custom Stripe payment form into your website.

Instead of the payment process going through to the Stripe website, the customer will stay on your website.

If you would prefer to have total control over the look of your payment form, this is the option for you.  

Why Use Stripe for Online Payments?

Stripe is free to sign up for, has no monthly fees, the transaction rates are generally pretty low, and it supports a wide number of currencies.

Stripe is known for its simple API which allows small companies to build custom e-commerce experiences with their site even if they have limited development resources.

Stripe offers volume discounts at a lower price than most other payment platforms.

They begin to provide these volume discounts once a company makes over $80,000 USD in sales each month.

Stripe is small-business-friendly, especially since there is no monthly minimum, but it is good for larger companies looking for a payment gateway as well. 

Stripe offers payment security. Stripe’s security features, such as encryption and TLS (otherwise referred to as SSL), are included with your account.

They also offer extra security features, such as Stripe Radar, which is their anti-fraud service, for an added cost.

Is stripe not your ideal platform? Here are some other payment platforms that are quite popular.