Planning considerations

One of the first questions to answer is whether you’ll need a single Stripe account, or several. To learn more, see our account overview.

Considerations

• Which countries will you operate in?

  If more than one, consider creating ​​Stripe accounts where you have legal entities to take advantage of local acquiring for local customers.

  In some countries, Stripe supports adding multiple bank accounts for different currencies, which might impact the number of accounts you create.

  For example, if you have legal entities in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands, and plan to pay out to bank accounts in multiple currencies, you might choose to have a US account for USD payouts, a CA account for CAD payouts, and one NL account capable of settling in EUR, GBP, and DKK. This account organization allows you to benefit from local acquiring and separate payouts by business line.

• Do you need to direct funds to more than one bank account?

  If both bank accounts are in the same currency, create separate Stripe accounts to take advantage of automatic payouts and avoid manually switching between bank accounts for each payout.

• How will you create your accounts?

  You need to complete account setup for each Stripe account. To set up regional Stripe accounts, add new accounts using your first Stripe account to streamline authentication and access.

  If your integration requires multiple Stripe accounts, it’s important to know which account you’re operating in. You need to specify the secret key on each API request to correctly identify the regional account.

  If you’re going to use a single account for Stripe transactions and charge customers in every currency, you only need to go through account setup one time. This account organization guarantees that all data is available in a single account, which streamlines the integration and reporting process. You can also create additional Stripe accounts later for different geographies if needed.

• Can you benefit from local acquiring?

  To benefit from local acquiring, you need to have regional accounts.

• Do you need centralized reporting in a single Stripe account?

  Options	Regional	Unified
  Description	A more complex integration that uses multiple regional Stripe accounts to manage multiple bank accounts or acquire in local currencies. Requires a local legal entity for each Stripe account.	The simplest integration that uses a single Stripe account for charging customers in every currency and specific payment methods depending on the account’s location.
  Benefits	Acquire in the local market with the most support for new payment methods. Eliminate FX and settles into like currency. Achieve higher authorization rates and lower network costs	Unify reporting under a single Stripe account for all markets. Avoid developing internal logic for routing customer transactions to the correct Stripe account for processing.
  Limitations	Adds complexity to reporting and integration. Lacks a holistic Dashboard view of data.	Some payment methods might not be compatible. Necessitates cross-border acquiring and settlement FX.

PaymentIntents is our default API. PaymentIntents track the lifecycle of a customer’s payment flow ​​and enable you to integrate against asynchronous payment flows like 3D Secure. Asynchronous flows are especially important when it comes to supporting global expansion (for example, SCA, compliance with 3D Secure in Europe (and similar regulations in India), and introducing other payment methods such as SEPA Direct Debit or SOFORT in Europe.

Considerations

• Which payment methods will you offer your customers?

  To see which payment methods the PaymentMethods API supports, check for digital wallets, bank debits, bank redirects, buy now, pay later, and vouchers.

• Which countries will you operate in?

  If your business is based in the European Economic Area (EEA) and you serve customers in the EEA, you must integrate on PaymentIntents to comply with SCA regulations. ​​If your business is based in India and serving customers in India, we also recommend using PaymentIntents.

• Which payment methods and countries are on your roadmap?

  If you don’t require PaymentIntents today but plan to expand to new payment methods or countries, we recommend that you integrate with PaymentIntents for all methods that are currently available as PaymentMethods, and plan your migration to PaymentIntents for the remaining methods when they become available on the PaymentMethods API.

The client-side integration process typically involves building components for Stripe. Use our website checklist to make sure you’re following best practices and standards for your frontend development.

The Integration security guide helps you ensure PCI compliance and explains the importance of secure communication between your customer and your servers.

Considerations

• Is your business already PCI-compliant?

  If yes, and you want to process cards without tokenizing, speak to your Stripe contact or support.stripe.com.

• Will you be using multiple payment processors?

  If yes, consider dual-tokenization when processing card payments. Dual-tokenizing can help you to continue to run charges on your other payment processor without prompting your customers for their credit card details again.

• How will you manage fraud in the checkout experience?

  To provide Stripe with additional fraud signals, include Stripe.js on every page that a customer interacts with related to the checkout process. This includes product and payment pages.

• How much control do you need over the checkout experience?

  Stripe offers two main ways to create payment forms: Elements and Checkout. Both are secure, optimized for conversion, and PCI-compliant, though they differ in terms of customizability and time to integrate.

  Options	Stripe Checkout	Stripe.JS and Elements
  Description	Stripe Checkout is a secure, Stripe-hosted page that lets you collect payments. It works across devices and can help increase your conversion.	Elements is a set of prebuilt UI components, like inputs and buttons, for building your checkout flow. Stripe.js tokenizes sensitive payment details without ever letting it touch your server.
  Benefits	Simplified integration. Up-to-date with available payment methods. Optimized conversion. Co-branded with your business logo and colors.	Optimized conversion with dynamic inputs. Simplified PCI compliance with SAQ A reporting because all sensitive information is handled by Stripe.js. Customizable styling to match the appearance of your checkout flow.
  Limitations	Temporarily redirects customers off your web domain. Fewer options for customization.	Increased integration time and effort compared to Checkout. Elements doesn’t support all payment methods, requiring that you build additional fields to use unsupported methods.

  Create a PaymentMethod with Stripe.js or a mobile SDK

  If you’re using Stripe.js and Elements, tokenize payment details from a customer before creating a charge.

  At a high level, this process involves using a publishable key to transmit card (or other payment method) details from a client browser or mobile app directly to Stripe’s servers.

  Stripe ingests these sensitive payment details and returns a PaymentMethod that can be charged. For users accessing the service using a web browser, use Stripe.js.

  If the user is submitting payment details using an iOS or Android app, use one of Stripe’s libraries.

​​Involve your finance team early in your scoping so that they can advise you on your new reconciliation process and reporting needs. To learn more about your options, start by reviewing the Payments and payouts and Financial reports Guides. Depending on your needs, you may use a combination of Financial Reports, Dashboard exports, Sigma, and the API.

Considerations

• Do you require fast and frequent access to transaction data and payouts?

  • Financial Reports and Sigma make your data available by 12:00 UTC the following day.
  • Dashboard exports, while available immediately, take longer to generate, which makes them best for pulling small increments of data on the order of several thousand records—not tens of thousands.
  • Building custom reporting using the Stripe APIs provides access to the specific data you need as it becomes available. However, it’s resource-intensive to both build and maintain.

• Do you have data analytics tooling?

  Sigma is our custom reporting tool that makes all of your transactional data available as an interactive SQL environment in the Dashboard. You can use it to gain insights into anything from ARPU to customer churn, and identify new business opportunities.

• Which data points do you use to reconcile your finances? Are any of these fields custom and generated by your team (for example, an order or booking ID)?

  Make sure ​​your custom data is included as metadata on any relevant reporting objects.

Considerations

• Does your business require that you pay out specific amounts to your bank account?

  If you don’t need to control your payouts, use automatic payouts to sweep your entire balance automatically into your bank account on your payout schedule.

  If you do need to deposit specific amounts, you can use manual payouts to delimit the amount you transfer to your bank account. Manual payouts don’t allow you to link the payout amount to specific transactions.

  Alternatively, consider Instant Payouts to a debit card, which facilitates remaining on automatic payouts.

• Do you want to retain a balance in your account?

  Manual and Instant Payouts allow you to keep a Stripe balance of your choosing.

• Do you plan to reconcile between transactions on your account and payouts to your bank?

  If yes, use automatic payouts.

As an e-commerce business, it’s essential to keep fraud rates low and handle customer disputes. Stripe offers Radar, which helps you fine-tune your fraud prevention environment, get insights about suspicious charges, and assess your fraud management performance from a unified dashboard. For businesses in many markets, and more generally for e-commerce, fighting fraud is fundamental to success.

Considerations

• Do you encounter moderate or high fraud and dispute rates?

  Consider employing some of these best practices as part of your overall fraud strategy to avoid excessive chargebacks and reduce potential customer burden and losses.

• Would your business benefit from granular control in your fraud prevention tooling?

  Radar allows you to choose your risk tolerance, write your own Rules to fine-tune your protection using a variety of transaction attributes, and manage custom block and review lists that enable you to quickly take action on fraud.