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HomePaymentsMultiparty payments

Collect payments then pay out

Collect payments from customers and pay them out to sellers or service providers.

This guide explains how to accept payments and move funds to the bank accounts of your service providers or sellers. For demonstration purposes, we’ll build a home-rental marketplace that connects homeowners to potential tenants. We’ll also show you how to accept payments from tenants (customers) and pay out homeowners (your platform’s users).

Prerequisites

  1. Register your platform.
  2. Add business details to activate your account.
  3. Complete your platform profile.
  4. Customize brand settings. Adding a business name, icon, and brand color is required for Connect Onboarding.

Set up Stripe
Server-side

Install Stripe’s official libraries to access the API from your application:

Command Line
# For detailed setup, see our quickstarts at https://stripe.com/docs/development/quickstart bundle add stripe

Create a connected account

When a user (seller or service provider) signs up on your marketplace, you must create a corresponding user Account (referred to as a connected account). You can’t accept payments and move funds to the bank account of your user without a connected account. Connected accounts represent your users in the Stripe API and collect the information required to verify the user’s identity. In our home-rental example, the connected account represents the homeowner.

Create an Express connected account and prefill information

Use the /v1/accounts API to create an Express account and set type to express in the account creation request.

Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/accounts \ -u
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \ -d type=express

If you’ve already collected information for your connected accounts, you can pre-fill that information on the account object for the user. Connect Onboarding won’t ask for the pre-filled information during account onboarding. The account holder confirms the pre-filled information before accepting the Connect service agreement. You can pre-fill any information on the account, including personal and business information, external account information, and more.

Create an account link

You can create an account link by calling the Account Links API with the following parameters:

  • account
  • refresh_url
  • return_url
  • type = account_onboarding
Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/account_links \ -u
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \ -d account=
{{CONNECTED_ACCOUNT_ID}}
\ -d refresh_url="https://example.com/reauth" \ -d return_url="https://example.com/return" \ -d type=account_onboarding

Redirect your user to the account link URL

The response to your Account Links request includes a value for the key url. Redirect to this link to send your user into the flow. URLs from the Account Links API are temporary and are single-use only, because they grant access to the connected account user’s personal information. Authenticate the user in your application before redirecting them to this URL. If you want to prefill information, you must do so before generating the account link. After you create the account link for an Express account, you can’t read or write information for the account.

Don’t email, text, or otherwise send account link URLs directly to your user. Instead, redirect the authenticated user to the account link URL from within your platform’s application.

Handle the user returning to your platform

Connect Onboarding requires you to pass both a return_url and refresh_url to handle all cases where the user is redirected to your platform. It’s important that you implement these correctly to provide the best experience for your user.

You can use HTTP for your return_url and refresh_url while in test mode (for example, to test with localhost), but live mode only accepts HTTPS. Be sure to swap testing URLs for HTTPS URLs before going live.

return_url

Stripe issues a redirect to this URL when the user completes the Connect Onboarding flow. This doesn’t mean that all information has been collected or that there are no outstanding requirements on the account. This only means the flow was entered and exited properly.

No state is passed through this URL. After a user is redirected to your return_url, check the state of the details_submitted parameter on their account by doing either of the following:

  • Listening to account.updated webhooks
  • Calling the Accounts API and inspecting the returned object

refresh_url

Stripe redirects your user to the refresh_url in these cases:

  • The link is expired (a few minutes went by since the link was created).
  • The user already visited the URL (the user refreshed the page or clicked back or forward in the browser).
  • Your platform is no longer able to access the account.
  • The account has been rejected.

Your refresh_url should trigger a method on your server to call Account Links again with the same parameters, and redirect the user to the Connect Onboarding flow to create a seamless experience.

Handle users that haven’t completed onboarding

A user that’s redirected to your return_url might not have completed the onboarding process. Use the /v1/accounts endpoint to retrieve the user’s account and check for charges_enabled. If the account isn’t fully onboarded, provide UI prompts to allow the user to continue onboarding later. The user can complete their account activation through a new account link (generated by your integration). You can check the state of the details_submitted parameter on their account to see if they’ve completed the onboarding process.

Enable payment methods

View your payment methods settings and enable the payment methods you want to support. Card payments, Google Pay, and Apple Pay are enabled by default but you can enable and disable payment methods as needed.

Before the payment form is displayed, Stripe evaluates the currency, payment method restrictions, and other parameters to determine the list of supported payment methods. Payment methods that increase conversion and that are most relevant to the currency and customer’s location are prioritized. Lower priority payment methods are hidden in an overflow menu.

Accept a payment

We recommend using Stripe Checkout, a prebuilt Stripe-hosted page, to accept payments. Checkout supports multiple payment methods and automatically shows the most relevant ones to your customer. You can also use the Payment Element, a prebuilt UI component that is embedded as an iframe in your payment form, to accept multiple payment methods with a single frontend integration.

Create a Checkout Session Client and Server

A Checkout Session controls what your customer sees in the Stripe-hosted payment page such as line items, the order amount and currency, and acceptable payment methods.

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

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

On your server, make the following call to Stripe’s API. After creating a Checkout Session, redirect your customer to the URL returned in the response.

Command Line
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/checkout/sessions \ -u
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \ -d mode=payment \ -d "line_items[0][price]"=
{{PRICE_ID}}
\ -d "line_items[0][quantity]"=1 \ -d "payment_intent_data[application_fee_amount]"=123 \ -d "payment_intent_data[transfer_data][destination]"=
{{CONNECTED_ACCOUNT_ID}}
\ -d success_url="https://example.com/success" \ -d cancel_url="https://example.com/cancel"
  • line_items - This argument represents the items the customer is purchasing. The items are displayed in the Stripe-hosted user interface.
  • success_url - This argument redirects a user after they complete a payment.
  • cancel_url - This argument redirects a user after they click cancel.
  • payment_intent_data[application_fee_amount] - This argument specifies the amount your platform plans to take from the transaction. The full charge amount is immediately transferred from the platform to the connected account that’s specified by transfer_data[destination] after the charge is captured. The application_fee_amount is then transferred back to the platform, and the Stripe fee is deducted from the platform’s amount.
  • payment_intent_data[transfer_data][destination] - This argument indicates that this is a destination charge. A destination charge means the charge is processed on the platform and then the funds are immediately and automatically transferred to the connected account’s pending balance. For our home-rental example, we want to build an experience where the customer pays through the platform and the homeowner gets paid by the platform.

When performing destination charges, Checkout uses the brand settings of your platform account. See the Customize branding section for more information.

This Session creates a destination charge. If you need to control the timing of transfers or need to transfer funds from a single payment to multiple parties, use separate charges and transfers instead.

Handle post-payment events Server-side

Stripe sends a checkout.session.completed event when the payment completes. Use a webhook to receive these events and run actions, like sending an order confirmation email to your customer, logging the sale in a database, or starting a shipping workflow.

Listen for these events rather than waiting on a callback from the client. On the client, the customer could close the browser window or quit the app before the callback executes. Some payment methods also take 2-14 days for payment confirmation. Setting up your integration to listen for asynchronous events enables you to accept multiple payment methods with a single integration.

In addition to handling the checkout.session.completed event, we recommend handling two other events when collecting payments with Checkout:

EventDescriptionNext steps
checkout.session.completedThe customer has successfully authorized the payment by submitting the Checkout form.Wait for the payment to succeed or fail.
checkout.session.async_payment_succeededThe customer’s payment succeeded.Fulfill the purchased goods or services.
checkout.session.async_payment_failedThe payment was declined, or failed for some other reason.Contact the customer through email and request that they place a new order.

These events all include the Checkout Session object. After the payment succeeds, the underlying PaymentIntent status changes from processing to succeeded.

Testing

Test your account creation flow by creating accounts and using OAuth.

Use test payment details and the test redirect page to verify your integration. Click the tabs below to view details for each payment method.

Payment methodScenarioHow to test
Credit cardThe card payment succeeds and doesn’t require authentication.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number 4242 4242 4242 4242 with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.
Credit cardThe card payment requires authentication.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number 4000 0025 0000 3155 with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.
Credit cardThe card is declined with a decline code like insufficient_funds.Fill out the credit card form using the credit card number 4000 0000 0000 9995 with any expiration, CVC, and postal code.

Disputes

As the settlement merchant on charges, your platform is responsible for disputes. Make sure you understand the best practices for responding to disputes.

Payouts

By default, any funds that you transfer to a connected account accumulate in the connected account’s Stripe balance and are paid out on a daily rolling basis. You can change the payout frequency by going into the connected account’s detail page, clicking the right-most button in the Balance section, and selecting Edit payout schedule.

Refunds

To issue refunds, go to the Payments page. Select individual payments by clicking the checkbox to the left of any payments you want to refund. After you select a payment, Stripe displays a Refund button in the upper-right corner of the page. Click the Refund button to issue a refund to customers for all payments you have selected.

Express connected accounts can’t initiate refunds for payments. If your platform has Express connected accounts, you must process refunds for them.

See also

  • Manage connected accounts in the Dashboard
  • Issue refunds
  • Customize statement descriptors
  • Work with multiple currencies
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On this page
Prerequisites
Set up Stripe
Create a connected account
Enable payment methods
Accept a payment
Testing
Disputes
Payouts
Refunds
See also
Stripe Shell
Test mode
Welcome to the Stripe Shell! Stripe Shell is a browser-based shell with the Stripe CLI pre-installed. Login to your Stripe account and press Control + Backtick on your keyboard to start managing your Stripe resources in test mode. - View supported Stripe commands: - Find webhook events: - Listen for webhook events: - Call Stripe APIs: stripe [api resource] [operation] (e.g. )
The Stripe Shell is best experienced on desktop.
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