— No Results

    Charges vs Payment Intents APIs

    Learn about the differences between Stripe’s two core payment APIs and when to use them.

    Understanding the Stripe payment APIs

    There are three ways to accept payments on Stripe today:

    • Stripe Checkout
    • Charges API
    • Payment Intents API

    Stripe Checkout is a prebuilt payment page that you can redirect your customer to for simple purchases and subscriptions. It provides many features, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, internationalization, and form validation.

    The Charges and Payment Intents APIs let you build custom payment flows and experiences.

    We designed the Payment Intents API to be the unifying API for all Stripe products and payment methods. While we are not deprecating Charges, we plan to focus product development on Payment Intents to make it the foundational Stripe API.

    For a full feature comparison, see the table below:

    Charges API Payment Intents API
    Recommended for businesses with customers primarily in the U.S. / Canada who want a simple way to accept cards. Required for businesses that accept multiple payment methods and cards requiring authentication (e.g., due to Strong Customer Authentication in Europe).
    Works on Web, iOS, and Android. Works on Web, iOS, and Android. Can also be used to accept in-store payments with Terminal.
    Supports cards and all payment methods on the Sources API Supports cards, cards requiring 3DS, iDEAL, SEPA (with more to come)
    Is not SCA ready Is SCA ready

    Migrating code that reads from charges

    If you have an application with multiple payment flows and incrementally migrating each one from the Charges API to to the Payment Intents API, you should first update any code that reads from the Charge object. To help with this, the charge object has two new properties, payment_method_details and billing_details, which provide a consistent interface for reading the details of the payment method used for the charge.

    These fields are available on all API versions and on charge objects created with both the Charges API and the Payment Intents API.

    The following table shows commonly used properties on a charge and how the same information can be accessed using the new properties:

    Description Before After
    Details about the payment method used to create a charge

    charge.source

    charge.payment_method_details
    ID of the payment method used for the charge

    charge.source.id

    charge.payment_method
    Type of payment method used

    charge.source.object
    (e.g., card or bank_account)

    charge.payment_method_details.type
    Billing information for the charge (e.g., billing postal code)

    charge.source.address_zip

    charge.billing_details.address.postal_code
    Name of the cardholder

    charge.source.name

    charge.billing_details.name
    Last 4 digits of the card used

    charge.source.last4

    charge.payment_method_details.card.last4
    Fingerprint of the card

    charge.source.fingerprint

    charge.payment_method_details.card.fingerprint
    CVC verification status for the charge

    charge.source.cvc_check

    charge.payment_method_details.card.checks.cvc_check
    Card brand values

    charge.source.brand can be one of:
    Visa, MasterCard, Discover, JCB, UnionPay, Diners Club, American Express

    charge.payment_method_details.card.brand can be one of:
    visa, mastercard, discover, jcb, unionpay, diners, amex
    Google Pay enum value

    charge.source.tokenization_method is android_pay

    card.wallet.type within charge.payment_method_details is google_pay
    Description Before After
    Details about the payment method used to create a charge

    charge.source

    charge.payment_method_details
    ID of the payment method used for the charge

    charge.source.id
    charge.source.three_d_secure.card if 3D Secure source used

    charge.payment_method
    Type of payment method used

    charge.source.object == 'source' && charge.source.type
    Unless charge.source.type is three_d_secure

    charge.payment_method_details.type
    Billing information for the charge (e.g., billing postal code)

    charge.source.owner.address.postal_code

    charge.billing_details.address.postal_code
    Name of the cardholder

    charge.source.owner.name

    charge.billing_details.name
    Last 4 digits of the card used

    charge.source.card.last4
    charge.source.three_d_secure.last4

    charge.payment_method_details.card.last4
    Whether or not 3D Secure was successful

    charge.source.object == 'source' && charge.source.type == 'three_d_secure'

    charge.payment_method_details.card.three_d_secure&.succeeded
    Fingerprint of the card

    charge.source.card.fingerprint

    charge.payment_method_details.card.fingerprint
    CVC verification status for the charge

    charge.source.card.cvc_check

    charge.payment_method_details.card.checks.cvc_check
    Card brand values

    charge.source.card.brand can be one of:
    Visa, MasterCard, Discover, JCB, UnionPay, Diners Club, American Express

    charge.payment_method_details.card.brand can be one of:
    visa, mastercard, discover, jcb, unionpay, diners, amex
    Google Pay enum value

    charge.source.card.tokenization_method is android_pay

    card.wallet.type within charge.payment_method_details is google_pay

    Next steps

    Now you have migrated code that reads from Charges, you can continue migrating your integration.

    Was this page helpful?

    Thank you for helping improve Stripe's documentation. If you need help or have any questions, please consider contacting support.

    Questions?

    We're always happy to help with code or other questions you might have. Search our documentation, contact support, or connect with our sales team. You can also chat live with other developers in #stripe on freenode.

    On this page