Stripe takes the card payments in your checkout and pays the money out to your bank. You connect your own Stripe account to the workspace, so your sales land in that account. This article covers the connection itself, what its status means and what changes once it is in place.
Before you start
If Payments is off in your workspace, switch it on under Settings > Features first. Connecting Stripe then needs View Payments to open the payments overview, plus Update Platform Settings and Manage Integrations. Of the built-in roles, Owner and Admin have all three.
Connecting your account
In the Stripe box on the payments overview, click Connect with Stripe. Stripe opens, and you sign in to your Stripe account or create one. Allow the connection within 15 minutes, otherwise the request expires and you start again.
What happens next depends on your Stripe account:
- If Stripe can already take payments and pay out on it, you come straight back to the payments overview.
- If not, Stripe continues with its own onboarding form, where it asks for the details it needs about you and your business. When you finish, Stripe sends you back to the overview. If you stop halfway, Continue onboarding in the Stripe box opens a fresh Stripe form where you left off.
You can also connect from Settings > Integrations: pick Stripe and click Connect. That path always creates the live connection. A test connection starts from Start in test mode in the Stripe box, which is offered as long as nothing is connected yet.
A Stripe account that is already connected to another workspace can only be connected here by someone who is Owner or Admin of that other workspace as well.
What the status means
Once a connection exists, the Stripe box shows one row for Live and one for Test. A connected row shows the business name from your Stripe profile, or the account ID if there is none, and one of two states:
- Ready to receive money: Stripe accepts card payments on the account and you have submitted your details.
- Finish your Stripe setup: Stripe still needs something before it accepts payments. Click Continue onboarding to add the missing details.
Ready to receive money does not yet mean that payouts are on. Stripe can allow payments before payouts and can ask for more information later. The checklist step Connect Stripe on the overview is ticked once a Stripe connection, live or test, has payouts enabled and nothing currently due, or once PayPal is connected.
Your checkout uses a live connection as soon as it exists, even while the row still says Finish your Stripe setup. Until Stripe accepts card payments, the checkout offers no card payment, and without PayPal or an offline method buyers see Checkout unavailable. Finish the Stripe form before you share a checkout link.
Stripe reports changes to your account, so the status follows when you add missing details in Stripe later.
What happens to your products
You do not create products in Stripe. Right after connecting, every active price in your catalog is created in your Stripe account in the background, and each new or changed price follows on its own. Stripe prices cannot be edited, so a change to the amount, currency, interval or similar creates a new Stripe price and archives the old one. A pay-what-you-want price with an amount and minimum of zero needs nothing in Stripe and is skipped.
Already selling in Stripe? Under Payments > Catalog > Products, open the three-dot menu and choose Import from Stripe. Pick the Stripe mode and click List Stripe products to see up to 100 active Stripe prices, then choose the ones to import. The import reads only the mode you pick. If that mode is not connected, the import says so instead of reading the other one. It only reads from Stripe and changes nothing there. Importing needs Manage Catalog (Products, Prices, Coupons).
Balance and payouts
With Stripe connected, the overview shows the Stripe balance panel. For each currency it shows what is Available to pay out, what is On the way and what is Instant available. Below that come your five most recent payouts and, when one is under way, the Next payout.
Payouts are made by Stripe to your bank account; the panel only shows them. If both connections exist, the panel shows the live account. A test balance is marked Test. The balance is kept for up to 5 minutes and the payouts for up to 10, so Refresh fetches both again.
Disconnecting
Disconnect on a row asks Disconnect Stripe? first. Disconnecting stops that connection at once: checkout and refunds through memberarea fail until you connect again. Subscriptions that Stripe already bills live in your Stripe account, and memberarea no longer hears about them. Orders, invoices and past data stay as they are, and nothing is deleted in your Stripe account. A connection can also be disconnected in Settings > Integrations.
Without a live connection your checkout tells buyers that it is unavailable, unless a live PayPal account or an offline payment method can take the payment or there is nothing to pay.
PayPal is connected separately, in its own box below the Stripe box.