Payments for existing customers

Learn how to charge an existing payment method while a customer is on-session.

A Checkout Session allows buyers to enter their payment details. If the buyer is an existing customer, you can configure the Checkout Session to prefill the details with one of the customer’s saved cards.

Create a Checkout Session
Client-side
Server-side

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

index.html
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Checkout</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <form action="/create-checkout-session" method="POST">
      <button type="submit">Checkout</button>
    </form>
  </body>
</html>

Checkout supports reusing existing Customer objects with the customer parameter. When reusing existing customers, all objects created by Checkout, such as Payment Intents and Subscriptions, are associated with that Customer object.

Append the {CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID} template variable to the success_url to get access to the Session ID after your customer successfully completes a Checkout Session. After creating the Checkout Session, redirect your customer to the URL returned in the response.

OptionalDisplay additional saved payment methods
Server-side

Prefill fields on payment page

If all the following conditions are true, Checkout prefills the email, name, card, and billing address fields on the payment page using details from the Customer’s saved card:

Checkout is in payment or subscription mode; setup mode doesn’t support prefilling fields.
The customer has a saved card. Checkout only supports prefilling card payment methods.
The saved card has allow_redisplay set to always or you adjusted the default display setting.
The payment method includes billing_details required by the Checkout Session’s billing_address_collection value:
- auto requires values for email, name, and address[country]. US, CA, and GB billing addresses also require address[postal_code].
- required requires values for email, name, and all address fields.

If your Customer has multiple saved cards, Checkout prefills details from the card matching the following prioritization:

In payment mode, Stripe prefills the fields using the Customer’s newest saved card.
In subscription mode, Stripe prefills the Customer’s default payment method if it’s a card. Otherwise, Stripe prefills the newest saved card.

When Checkout is collecting a shipping address, Checkout prefills shipping address fields if the Customer’s shipping.address meets the Checkout Session’s supported countries.

Prefill timeout

The prefilled payment method displays for 30 minutes following Checkout Session creation. After it expires, loading the same Checkout Session doesn’t prefill the payment method anymore for security reasons.

Handle post-payment events
Server-side

Stripe sends a checkout.session.completed event when a customer completes a Checkout Session payment. Use the Dashboard webhook tool or follow the webhook guide to receive and handle these events, which might trigger you to:

Send an order confirmation email to your customer.
Log the sale in a database.
Start a shipping workflow.

Listen for these events rather than waiting for your customer to be redirected back to your website. Triggering fulfillment only from your Checkout landing page is unreliable. Setting up your integration to listen for asynchronous events allows you to accept different types of payment methods with a single integration.

Learn more in our fulfillment guide for Checkout.

Handle the following events when collecting payments with the Checkout:

Event	Description	Action
checkout.session.completed	Sent when a customer successfully completes a Checkout Session.	Send the customer an order confirmation and fulfill their order.
checkout.session.async_payment_succeeded	Sent when a payment made with a delayed payment method, such as ACH direct debt, succeeds.	Send the customer an order confirmation and fulfill their order.
checkout.session.async_payment_failed	Sent when a payment made with a delayed payment method, such as ACH direct debt, fails.	Notify the customer of the failure and bring them back on-session to attempt payment again.