Connect Onboarding for Custom accounts

Let Stripe collect identity verification information for your Custom connected accounts.

Connect Onboarding for Custom Accounts is a web form hosted by Stripe that takes care of collecting identity verification information from users. It dynamically adjusts the information that it collects to reflect the connected account’s capabilities, country, and business type. Connect Onboarding is the recommended solution to collect identity verification information for Custom accounts, and ensures that your flow is optimized for:

Mobile browsers
Accessibility
Internationalization and localization
Conversion rate
Intelligently requesting requirements based on what’s already provided on the account

Here’s what the form looks like for Stripe’s sample integration, Rocket Deliveries:

How to use Connect Onboarding for Custom Accounts

Go to your Connect settings page to customize the visual appearance of the form: you can provide the name, color, and icon of your brand. You must provide this information for Connect Onboarding to work.
Create a new account and get the account ID, or use an existing account ID (in the form of acct_XXXXXXXX).
Call the Account Links with the following parameters (see the API ref for more):
- account
- refresh_url
- return_url
- type
- collect (optional)
In the onboarding flow for your own platform, redirect your user to the url returned by Account Links.
Handle additional account states, redirecting your user back into the Connect Onboarding flow if necessary. To handle user-initiated updates to information they’ve already provided, create a way for your user to get a new redirect to the Connect Onboarding form from your platform’s dashboard.

Determine the information to collect

Connect Onboarding for Custom Accounts supports upfront or incremental onboarding. Upfront onboarding collects the eventually_due requirements for the account, while incremental onboarding means collects the currently_due requirements. For the advantages and disadvantages of each, see the onboarding flows documentation.

The currently_due requirements request only the user information needed for verification at this specific point in time; the eventually_due requirements include a more complete set of questions that we’ll eventually need to collect.

Based on the needs of your platform, pass either currently_due or eventually_due as the value of the collect parameter in your calls to Account Links. Here’s an example request:

Terminal

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/account_links \
  -u sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc
: \
  -d "account"="acct_1032D82eZvKYlo2C" \
  -d "refresh_url"="https://example.com/reauth" \
  -d "return_url"="https://example.com/return" \
  -d "type"="account_onboarding" \
  -d "collect"="eventually_due"

Redirect your user to the Account Link URL

The response to your Account Links request includes a value for the key url. Redirect your user to this link to send them into the flow. Account Link URLs are short-lived and can be used only once because they grant access to the account holder’s personal information. Be sure to authenticate the user in your application before redirecting them to this URL.

Do not email, text, or otherwise send Account Link URLs directly to your user. Instead, redirect an 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 in which the user will be redirected back 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 you are in test mode (e.g., to test with localhost), but for live mode only HTTPS will be accepted. Be sure you’ve swapped any testing URLs for HTTPS URLs before going live.

return_url

Stripe will issue a redirect back to this URL when the user completes the Connect Onboarding flow, or clicks Save for later at any point in the flow. It does not mean that all information has been collected, or that there are no outstanding requirements on the account. It only means the flow was entered and exited properly.

No state is passed via this URL. After a user is redirected to your return_url, check the state of the requirements hash on their account, either by listening to account.updated webhooks, or calling the Accounts and inspecting the state of the requirements hash. See more details in Step 4 below.

refresh_url

Your user will be redirected to the refresh_url in these cases:

The link is expired (a few minutes went by since the link was created)
The link was already visited (the user refreshed the page or clicked the back/forward button)

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

Handle the case of new requirements becoming due

Set up your integration to listen for changes to account requirements, if you haven’t already done so. We recommend using webhooks to do so. You can test handling new requirements (and how they may disable charges and payouts) with our test mode trigger cards.

Based on the verification needs of your application, send the user back into Connect Onboarding as necessary to satisfy currently_due or eventually_due requirements as described in step 1. You can use this as a signal of when to send your user back into the flow. Keep in mind that using Connect Onboarding means you don’t really need to worry about what the requirements are – sending the user back into Connect Onboarding means it will collect the right information.

For example, if your user mistypes their information and cannot be verified, they could be asked to provide an Identity Document (e.g. a Driver’s License in the United States). Sending this user into Connect Onboarding prompts them to upload such a document to ensure they become verified.

Connect Onboarding for Custom Accounts does not collect the external_account requirement. To collect external_account, use Stripe Elements or consider upgrading to Express accounts. Contact us to learn more.

Handle the case of user-initiated updates

Most Connect Onboarding usage discussed thus far has been about prompting the user to provide new information. Connect Onboarding also supports user-initiated updates to the information they’ve already provided via the type parameter of the Account Link. type accepts one of two values: account_onboarding or account_update.

account_onboarding

This value for type provides a form for inputting outstanding requirements. Use it when you’re onboarding a new user, or when an existing user has new requirements; such as when a user had already provided enough information, but you requested a new capability that needs additional info. Send the user to the form in this mode to just collect the new information you need.

account_update

This value for type displays the fields that are already populated on the account object, and allows your user to edit previously provided information. Provide an access point in your platform’s dashboard to a type=account_update Account Link, for users to initiate updates themselves (e.g., when their address changes). Consider framing this as “edit my profile” or “update my verification information”.