Connect Overview

Stripe Connect is for accepting money on behalf of others, and gaining access to their data. This functionality is available in every country Stripe supports.

You might use Connect if you:

• Are building a platform that enables e-commerce, as Squarespace or Shopify do.
• Need to easily accept payments and pay out your service providers, like Lyft with its drivers or Handy with its workers. (You can even create Stripe accounts for your users, so they only ever interact with your platform.)
• Want to tap into your users’ data to provide analytics or any other business insights. Baremetrics is a good example of a service that does this.

In general, if you’re building a platform or marketplace that needs to pay third-parties or building applications that help Stripe users do more with their account or their data, Connect is likely the right solution for you.

Recipes

If you know what type of platform you’d like to build, we’ve written up some sample recipes for specific types of platforms:

• On-demand apps: building an app like Lyft or Handy.
• Store builders: allowing other people to sell on your platform, like Squarespace or Bigcommerce.
• Analytics services: data-only services like Baremetrics that build on top of Stripe account data.

(Even if you’re not striving for one of those exactly, these examples should help you figure out how you’d implement yours.)

Getting started

1. Register your platform on your Dashboard. (You only need to do this once.)
2. Create or connect to accounts for your users, for example sellers or service providers.

After that, you can charge credit cards, set up recurring billing, and take advantage of the rest of Stripe’s full API on behalf of your users.

You can choose any level of customizability for your integration, whether it’s collecting transaction fees, sending transfers, or even paying your users’ Stripe fees.

The entire flow works the same regardless of whether your platform’s users already have Stripe accounts, need to create one, or you want the platform to create the Stripe account on their behalf.

Keep reading

Read on to get started with your Connect integration.

• Connecting to accounts
• Payments and fees
• Connect Platform agreement