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Accept payments for digital goods on iOS using Payment Links

Link out to a Stripe-hosted payment page from your app to sell digital goods or subscriptions.

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In some countries, you can link to an external website to accept payments on iOS. This guide shows you how you can create low-code payment links from the Stripe Dashboard and use those to redirect customers from your app to a Stripe-hosted payment page. You can dynamically update the link with URL parameters to pre-fill a customer’s email or use the client_reference_id to pass through a user’s app ID or unique identifier.

Payment Links are a great option if you have a limited number of products and prices, because you don’t need to stand up a server. If you want to offer a more dynamic cart or attach a Customer to the session, we recommend using Stripe Checkout instead.

Note

This guide only describes the process for selling in-app digital goods. If you sell any of the following use the native iOS payment guide instead:

  • Physical items
  • Goods and services intended for consumption outside your app
  • Real-time person-to-person services between two individuals

What you’ll build

This guide shows you how to:

  • Model your digital goods or subscriptions with Products and Prices.
  • Create payment links from the Dashboard.
  • Use universal links to redirect directly to your app from the payment link.
  • Monitor webhooks to update your customer’s in-app subscriptions.

What isn’t covered

This guide demonstrates how to add payment links alongside your existing in-app purchase system. It doesn’t cover:

Set up universal links
Client-side
Server-side

Universal links allow payment links to deep link into your app after a successful payment. To configure a universal link:

  1. Add an apple-app-site-association file to your domain.
  2. Add an Associated Domains entitlement to your app.
  3. Add a fallback page for your Checkout redirect URLs.

Define the associated domains

Add a file to your domain at .well-known/apple-app-site-association to define the URLs your app handles. Prepend your App ID with your Team ID, which you can find on the Membership page of the Apple Developer Portal.

.well-known/apple-app-site-association
{
  "applinks": {

      "apps": [],
      "details": [
           {
             "appIDs": [ "A28BC3DEF9.com.example.MyApp1",
                         "A28BC3DEF9.com.example.MyApp1-Debug" ],
             "components": [
               {
                  "/": "/checkout_redirect*",
                  "comment": "Matches any URL whose path starts with /checkout_redirect"
               }
             ]
           }
       ]
   }
}

Warning

You must serve the file with MIME type application/json. Use curl -I to confirm the content type.

Command Line
curl -I https://example.com/.well-known/apple-app-site-association

See Apple’s page on supporting associated domains for more details.

Add an Associated Domains entitlement to your app

  1. Open the Signing & Capabilities pane of your app’s target.
  2. Click + Capability, then select Associated Domains.
  3. Add an entry for applinks:yourdomain.com to the Associated Domains list.

For more information on universal links, see Apple’s universal links documentation.

Although iOS intercepts links to the URLs defined in your apple-app-site-association file, you might encounter situations where the redirect fails to open your app.

Create a payment link for your product or subscription

  1. In the Dashboard, open the Payment Links page and click +New (or click the plus sign (+) and select Payment link).
  2. Optional: let your customer pay what they want (for example, to decide how many credits to buy), by selecting Customers choose what to pay.
  3. Select an existing product or click +Add a new product.
  4. If you’re adding a new product, fill out the product details and click Add product.
  5. Navigate After payment and select Don’t show confirmation page.
  6. Set a universal link as your success URL to direct your customer to your app after they complete the payment.
  7. Click Create Link

Payment Links support card payments and Apple Pay by default. You can enable additional payment methods from the Dashboard.

Use URL parameters to attach relevant information

URL parameters allow you to add additional context to your payment page and streamline checkout. You can use URL parameters to adjust the language of the payment page, prefill an email or promotion code, or attach relevant metadata to help with reconciliation.

We recommend using prefilled_email and client_reference_id to help streamline checkout and help with your reconciliation.

ParameterDescriptionSyntax

prefilled_email

Use prefilled_email to enter an email address on the payment page automatically. Your customer can still edit this field, so the email you pass in for checkout might not be the same email that your customer uses to complete the payment.

prefilled_email must be a valid email address. Invalid values are silently dropped and your payment page continues to work as expected.

We recommend encoding email addresses that you attach as URL parameters to reduce the risk of them not being passed through to your payment page.

client_reference_idUse client_reference_id to attach a unique string of your choice to the Checkout Session. This can be an App ID or a cart ID (or similar), and you can use it to reconcile the Session with your internal systems. This value isn’t shown to the customer during checkout, but is sent in the checkout.session.completed webhook after payment completion.client_reference_id can be composed of alphanumeric characters, dashes, or underscores, and be any value up to 200 characters. Invalid values are silently dropped, but your payment page continues to work as expected.

The following is an example link with prefilled_email and client_reference_id:

https://buy.stripe.com/test_eVa3do41l4Ye6KkcMN?prefilled_email=jenny%40example.com&client_reference_id=id_123

Add the link to your app

Add a checkout button to your app. This button:

  • Prefills your payment link with prefilled_email and client_reference_id.
  • Opens the Stripe-hosted payment page in Safari.

Handle order fulfillment
Server-side

After the purchase succeeds, Stripe sends you a checkout.session.completed webhook. In the payload of the webhook event, you will find the client_reference_id under the checkout.session object, which you can use for your business logic, such as associating the payment with a specific order or user in your system.

To test your integration, you can monitor events in the Dashboard or using the Stripe CLI. For production, set up a webhook endpoint and subscribe to appropriate event types. If you don’t know your STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET key, click the webhook in the Dashboard to view it.

Testing

To test your that your checkout button works, do the following:

  1. Click the checkout button, which redirects you to the Stripe Checkout payment form.
  2. Enter the test number , a three-digit CVC, a future expiration date, and any valid postal code.
  3. Tap Pay.
  4. The checkout.session.completed webhook fires, and Stripe notifies your server about the transaction. You’re redirected back to your app.

See also

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