Using Connect with Express accounts
Note
Connect Onboarding is the recommended method for creating Express accounts. For legacy integrations, you can reference the documentation for OAuth with Express accounts.
Express demo
To see the complete Express onboarding flow in action, try the sample end-to-end Express integration before you start building your own. This demo includes an example of a user onboarding experience and account management for Rocket Rides, an on-demand marketplace.
You can find the demo’s complete source code on GitHub.
Before you begin
To create Express accounts, you must meet all of these requirements:
- Minimum API version: Express requires the API version 2017-05-25 or later. Capabilities in Express require the API version 2019-02-19 or later.
- Platform in a supported country: Platforms in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States can create Express accounts for any country Stripe supports. If you would like to be notified when platforms in your country can use Express accounts, let us know.
- Countries that don’t support self-serve: Due to restrictions that apply when using Connect in the United Arab Emirates and Thailand, platform users in these countries can’t self-serve Express Connect accounts. To begin onboarding for Express Accounts in these countries, contact us.
- Platforms in the UAE: Platforms in the UAE can only use Express accounts based in the UAE with the following charge types: destination_charges and separate charges and transfers. Destination charges using the on_behalf_of attribute are not yet supported for UAE platforms.
- Vetting for fraud: Your platform is ultimately responsible for losses incurred by Express accounts. To best protect against this, you need to closely examine all accounts that sign up using your platform for potential fraud. Refer to our best practices guide for more information.
- Platform profile: You need to complete your platform’s profile.
Onboarding Express Accounts outside of your platform’s country
You can enable onboarding on a per-country basis in the Connect Settings section of your Dashboard.
The Express account onboarding flow is currently localized in English, French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, and Thai.
Keep the following in mind when onboarding accounts globally:
- International business: Your platform is responsible for understanding the implications of doing business internationally, such as tax and financial reporting.
- Charge flows: Be sure to review your options for creating charges based on the countries you intend to operate in.
- Service agreement type: Your platform can create connected accounts under the recipient service agreement to enable cross-border transfers. Such accounts have restricted access to capabilities.
Configure the onboarding experience
Before onboarding your first account, go to the Connect settings page to customize the visual appearance of the form with your brand’s name, color, and icon. Connect Onboarding requires this information.
Create an Express account and prefill information
Create an Express account and set type to express in the account creation request.
If you know the country and capabilities for your connected account, you can provide that information when you create the account. Connect Onboarding then collects the requirements for those capabilities. To reduce onboarding effort, only request the capabilities you need.
If you collect information from your connected account users as part of your sign up flow, you can prefill that information on the account object for the user and the Connect Onboarding flow won’t collect that information again. If you’re onboarding an individual without their own website, be sure to prefill the account’s business_profile.url if your platform provides the user with a personal URL. If the user does not have a URL, you can provide business_profile.product_description instead.
To learn more about the information you’ll need to collect from accounts for your use case, see Required verification information.
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.
Use test data to prefill when testing your integration.
If you omit capabilities, Connect Onboarding uses the settings in the Configuration settings section of the Stripe Dashboard to automatically request capabilities based on the country for the connected account.
Create an account link
You can create an account link with the following parameters:
account- use the account ID returned by the API from the previous steprefresh_urlreturn_urltype=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. You can only use URLs from the account links once because they grant access to the account holder’s personal information. Authenticate the user in your application before redirecting them to this URL. After you create an account link on an Express account, you won’t be able to read or write Know Your Customer (KYC) information. Pre-fill any KYC information before creating the first account link.
Warning
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.
Note
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:
- Listen to
account.updatedevents with a Connect webhook. - Retrieve the account with the API.
refresh_url
Your user is redirected 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 can no longer 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 have not completed onboarding
A user that’s redirected to your return_url might not have completed the onboarding process. 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.