Save payment details during payment
Use the Payment Intents API to save payment details from a purchase. There are several use cases:
- Charge a customer for an e-commerce order and store the details for future purchases
- Initiate the first payment of a series of recurring payments
- Charge a deposit and store the details to charge the full amount later
If you’re looking for the individual Card Element guide, see Save a card during payment with the Card Element.
Set up StripeServer-side
First, register for a Stripe account and then use the Dashboard to create an account name. You can always edit your account name later.
Use our official libraries to access the Stripe API from your application:
Create a CustomerServer-side
To set a card up for future payments, you must attach it to a Customer. Create a Customer object when your customer creates an account with your business. Customer objects allow for reusing payment methods and tracking across multiple payments.
Enable payment methods
View your payment methods settings and enable the payment methods you want to support. You need at least one payment method enabled to create a PaymentIntent.
By default, Stripe enables cards and other prevalent payment methods that can help you reach more customers, but we recommend turning on additional payment methods that are relevant for your business and customers. See Payment method integration options for product and payment method support, and our pricing page for fees.
Create a PaymentIntentServer-side
If you want to render the Payment Element without first creating a PaymentIntent, see Collect payment details before creating an Intent.
The PaymentIntent object represents your intent to collect payment from a customer and tracks charge attempts and state changes throughout the payment process.
The PaymentIntent includes the payment methods shown to customers during checkout. If your integration requires it, you can list payment methods manually. But Stripe recommends using automated payment methods.
Stripe evaluates the currency, restrictions, and other parameters to determine the list of supported payment methods for each purchase. For relevant payment methods, Stripe prioritizes ones that help increase conversion. Your customers only see options relevant to their currency and location.
If you don’t see a payment method, check that:
- The currency specified in the PaymentIntent is supported by the payment method. (If you manually list payment method types, Stripe returns an error if you specify a payment method that doesn’t support the currency in the PaymentIntent.) Read more about payment method and product support to understand which payment methods support which currencies.
- Your business operates in a country supported by the payment method.
Always decide how much to charge on the server side, a trusted environment, as opposed to the client. This prevents malicious customers from being able to choose their own prices.
Included in the returned PaymentIntent is a client secret, which the client side uses to securely complete the payment process instead of passing the entire PaymentIntent object. You can use different approaches to pass the client secret to the client side.
Collect payment detailsClient-side
You’re ready to collect payment details on the client with the Payment Element. The Payment Element is a prebuilt UI component that simplifies collecting payment details for a variety of payment methods.
The Payment Element contains an iframe that securely sends the payment information to Stripe over an HTTPS connection. The checkout page address must also start with https://
rather than http://
for your integration to work. You can test your integration without using HTTPS, but remember to enable it when you’re ready to accept live payments.
The Payment Element renders a dynamic form that allows your customer to pick a payment method. Depending on their payment method, the form automatically requests that the customer fills in all necessary payment details.
You can customize the Payment Element to match the design of your site by passing the appearance object into options
when creating the Elements
provider.
By default, the Payment Element only collects the necessary billing address details. If you need to collect a customer’s full billing address (for example, for calculating the tax for digital goods and services) use the Address Element in billing mode.
Submit the payment to StripeClient-side
Use stripe.confirmPayment to complete the payment using details from the Payment Element. Provide a return_url to this function to indicate where Stripe should redirect the user after they complete the payment. Your user may be first redirected to an intermediate site, like a bank authorization page, before being redirected to the return_url
. Card payments immediately redirect to the return_url
when a payment is successful.
If you don’t want to redirect for card payments after payment completion, you can set redirect to if_required
. This only redirects customers that check out with redirect-based payment methods.
stripe.confirmPayment
may take several seconds to complete. During that time, disable your form from being resubmitted and show a waiting indicator like a spinner. If you receive an error, show it to the customer, re-enable the form, and hide the waiting indicator. If the customer must perform additional steps to complete the payment, such as authentication, Stripe.js walks them through that process.
If the payment succeeded, the card is saved to the Customer object. This is reflected on the PaymentMethod’s customer field. At this point, associate the ID of the Customer object with your own internal representation of a customer, if you have one. Now you can use the stored PaymentMethod object to collect payments from your customer in the future without prompting them for their payment details again.
Make sure the return_url
corresponds to a page on your website that provides the status of the payment. When Stripe redirects the customer to the return_url
, we provide the following URL query parameters:
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
payment_intent | The unique identifier for the PaymentIntent . |
payment_intent_client_secret | The client secret of the PaymentIntent object. |
If you have tooling that tracks the customer’s browser session, you might need to add the stripe.com
domain to the referrer exclude list. Redirects cause some tools to create new sessions, which prevents you from tracking the complete session.
Use one of the query parameters to retrieve the PaymentIntent. Inspect the status of the PaymentIntent to decide what to show your customers. You can also append your own query parameters when providing the return_url
, which persist through the redirect process.
Charge the saved payment method laterServer-side
bancontact
and ideal
are one-time payment methods by default. When set up for future usage, they generate a sepa_debit
reusable payment method type so you need to use sepa_debit
to query for saved payment methods.
When you’re ready to charge your customer off-session, use the Customer and PaymentMethod IDs to create a PaymentIntent. To find a payment method to charge, list the payment methods associated with your customer. This example lists cards but you can list any supported type.
When you have the Customer and PaymentMethod IDs, create a PaymentIntent with the amount and currency of the payment. Set a few other parameters to make the off-session payment:
- Set off_session to
true
to indicate that the customer is not in your checkout flow during this payment attempt—this causes the PaymentIntent to throw an error if authentication is required. - Set the value of the PaymentIntent’s confirm property to
true
, which causes confirmation to occur immediately when the PaymentIntent is created. - Set payment_method to the ID of the PaymentMethod and customer to the ID of the Customer.
Test the integration
Use test payment details and the test redirect page to verify your integration. Click the tabs below to view details for each payment method.
Test charging a saved SEPA Debit PaymentMethod
Confirming the PaymentIntent using iDEAL, Bancontact, or Sofort, generates a SEPA Direct Debit PaymentMethod. SEPA Direct Debit is a delayed notification payment method that transitions to an intermediate processing
state before transitioning several days later to a succeeded
or requires_payment_method
state.