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Accept a payment

Securely accept payments online.

Build a payment form or use a prebuilt checkout page to start accepting online payments.

Redirect to a Stripe-hosted payment page using Stripe Checkout. See how this integration compares to Stripe’s other integration types.

Checkout preview

Integration effort

Low code

Integration type

Redirect to Stripe-hosted payment page

UI customization

Limited customization

Try it out

First, register for a Stripe account.

Use our official libraries to access the Stripe API from your application:

Command Line
# Available as a gem
sudo gem install stripe
Gemfile
# If you use bundler, you can add this line to your Gemfile
gem 'stripe'

Redirect your customer to Stripe Checkout
Client-side
Server-side

Add a checkout button to your website that calls a server-side endpoint to create a Checkout Session.

You can also create a Checkout Session for an existing customer, allowing you to prefill Checkout fields with known contact information and unify your purchase history for that customer.

checkout.html
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Buy cool new product</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <!-- Use action="/create-checkout-session.php" if your server is PHP based. -->
    <form action="/create-checkout-session" method="POST">
      <button type="submit">Checkout</button>
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

A Checkout Session is the programmatic representation of what your customer sees when they’re redirected to the payment form. You can configure it with options such as:

You must populate success_url with the URL value of a page on your website that Checkout returns your customer to after they complete the payment. You can optionally also provide a cancel_url value of a page on your website that Checkout returns your customer to if they terminate the payment process before completion.

Note

Checkout Sessions expire 24 hours after creation by default.

After creating a Checkout Session, redirect your customer to the URL returned in the response.

# This example sets up an endpoint using the Sinatra framework.
# Watch this video to get started: https://youtu.be/8aA9Enb8NVc.

require 'json'
require 'sinatra'
require 'stripe'

# Set your secret key. Remember to switch to your live secret key in production.
# See your keys here: https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys
Stripe.api_key = 
'sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc'


post '/create-checkout-session' do
  session = Stripe::Checkout::Session.create({
    line_items: [{
      price_data: {
        currency: 'usd',
        product_data: {
          name: 'T-shirt',
        },
        unit_amount: 2000,
      },
      quantity: 1,
    }],
    mode: 'payment',
    # These placeholder URLs will be replaced in a following step.
    success_url: 'https://example.com/success',
    cancel_url: 'https://example.com/cancel',
  })

  redirect session.url, 303
end

Payment methods

By default, Stripe enables cards and other common payment methods. You can turn individual payment methods on or off in the Stripe Dashboard. In Checkout, Stripe evaluates the currency and any restrictions, then dynamically presents the supported payment methods to the customer.

To see how your payment methods appear to customers, enter a transaction ID or set an order amount and currency in the Dashboard.

You can enable Apple Pay and Google Pay in your payment methods settings. By default, Apple Pay is enabled and Google Pay is disabled. However, in some cases Stripe filters them out even when they’re enabled. We filter Google Pay if you enable automatic tax without collecting a shipping address.

Checkout’s Stripe-hosted pages don’t need integration changes to enable Apple Pay or Google Pay. Stripe handles these payments the same way as other card payments.

Confirm your endpoint

Confirm your endpoint is accessible by starting your web server (for example, localhost:4242) and running the following command:

Command Line
curl -X POST -is "http://localhost:4242/create-checkout-session" -d ""

You should see a response in your terminal that looks like this:

Command Line
HTTP/1.1 303 See Other
Location: https://checkout.stripe.com/c/pay/cs_test_...
...

Testing

You should now have a working checkout button that redirects your customer to Stripe Checkout.

  1. Click the checkout button.
  2. You’re redirected to the Stripe Checkout payment form.

If your integration isn’t working:

  1. Open the Network tab in your browser’s developer tools.
  2. Click the checkout button and confirm it sent an XHR request to your server-side endpoint (POST /create-checkout-session).
  3. Verify the request is returning a 200 status.
  4. Use console.log(session) inside your button click listener to confirm the correct data returned.

Show a success page
Client-side
Server-side

It’s important for your customer to see a success page after they successfully submit the payment form. Host this success page on your site.

Create a minimal success page:

success.html
<html>
  <head><title>Thanks for your order!</title></head>
  <body>
    <h1>Thanks for your order!</h1>
    <p>
      We appreciate your business!
      If you have any questions, please email
      <a href="mailto:orders@example.com">orders@example.com</a>.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

Next, update the Checkout Session creation endpoint to use this new page:

Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \
  -u "
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
:" \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][currency]"=usd \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][product_data][name]"=T-shirt \
  -d "line_items[0][price_data][unit_amount]"=2000 \
  -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \
  -d mode=payment \
  --data-urlencode success_url="http://localhost:4242/success.html" \
  --data-urlencode cancel_url="http://localhost:4242/cancel.html"

Note

If you want to customize your success page, read the custom success page guide.

Testing

  1. Click your checkout button.
  2. Fill out the payment details with the test card information:
    • Enter 4242 4242 4242 4242 as the card number.
    • Enter any future date for card expiry.
    • Enter any 3-digit number for CVC.
    • Enter any billing postal code.
  3. Click Pay.
  4. You’re redirected to your new success page.

Next, find the new payment in the Stripe Dashboard. Successful payments appear in the Dashboard’s list of payments. When you click a payment, it takes you to the payment details page. The Checkout summary section contains billing information and the list of items purchased, which you can use to manually fulfill the order.

Test your integration

To test your Stripe-hosted payment form integration:

  1. Create a Checkout Session.
  2. Fill out the payment details with a method from the following table.
    • Enter any future date for card expiry.
    • Enter any 3-digit number for CVC.
    • Enter any billing postal code.
  3. Click Pay. You’re redirected to your success_url.
  4. Go to the Dashboard and look for the payment on the Payments page. If your payment succeeded, you’ll see it in that list.
  5. Click your payment to see more details, like a Checkout summary with billing information and the list of purchased items. You can use this information to fulfill the order.

Learn more about testing your integration.

Card numberScenarioHow to test
The card payment succeeds and doesn’t require authentication.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.
The card payment requires authentication.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.
The card is declined with a decline code like insufficient_funds.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.
The UnionPay card has a variable length of 13-19 digits.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.

See Testing for additional information to test your integration.

Test cards

NumberDescription
Succeeds and immediately processes the payment.
Requires 3D Secure 2 authentication for a successful payment.
Always fails with a decline code of insufficient_funds.

Now that you have your basic integration working, learn how to programmatically get a notification whenever a customer pays.

See also

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Code quickstart
On this page
Redirect your customer to Stripe Checkout
Payment methods
Confirm your endpoint
Testing
Show a success page
Testing
Test your integration
Test cards
See also
Related Guides
Elements Appearance API
More payment scenarios
How cards work
Products Used
Payments
Elements
Checkout