For most businesses, accepting payments online is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. In 2025, consumers spent $1.5 trillion with US businesses online. But what if your business doesn’t have a website? For example, you might be starting out and not have the funds to build a website yet, or you may run an entirely brick-and-mortar business. Fortunately, there are several innovative methods, such as payment links, that make it fast, easy, and secure to accept online payments without a website.

Below, we’ll explain what payment links are, how to use them most effectively, and the benefits of not having a website.

What’s in this article?

• Common methods for accepting payments without a website
  
• Benefits of not having a website as a business
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

Common methods for accepting payments without a website

Businesses don’t need a traditional shopping cart or checkout process to get paid. Here are some common methods for accepting payments without a website:

Payment links

Payment links are the most versatile way for businesses to accept online payments without a website. You don’t need to work with a third-party platform or marketplace to use payment links.

What are payment links?

Payment links allow businesses to create a payment page and share the link directly with customers, who can click the link and complete a purchase without visiting a website. Payment pages display the product or service with a description and list the payment methods available to customers.

Stripe payment links

Stripe Payment Links require no coding and can be shared an unlimited number of times on any channel, including email, social media, and text messaging. They’re an agile, all-purpose tool on their own, or they can be used as part of a larger, integrated payment processing strategy.

How to use payment links

Stripe Payment Links are only available to businesses with a Stripe account, so if you’re not already signed up, you’ll want to do that first. Stripe users can create payment links directly from the Dashboard.

After creating a payment link in just a few clicks, you will see the Details page appear automatically. Now you’re ready to start sharing the link.

Tips for using payment links

Payment links have many uses, and can even replace an ecommerce website for many basic functions relating to sales and payments. They’re also especially effective for marketing and driving sales:

• Targeting distinct audience segments
  Payment links give you the ability to create multiple custom pages for the same product, which is perfect for emphasizing distinct value props for different customer segments.

• Testing out different messaging directions
  Payment links are a streamlined way to test out different messaging strategies to see which ones are more effective.

• SMS marketing
  Drop a link directly into a text message to your customers, allowing them to take action without navigating a long checkout flow or clicking through to a website.

• Generating urgency around product drops
  This is a particularly good option for limited edition releases, in-demand items that typically sell out quickly, and time-constrained offers.

• Making the most of sales and seasonal discounts
  Custom payment links are a great way to add extra power to campaigns and sales. Payment links are low-lift, so it’s easy to include them throughout the year.

• Fundraising and collecting donations
  Payment links offer a streamlined customer experience, which is especially valuable in situations like fundraising and donation collection.

Payment links and social media

In 2024, retail ecommerce sales racked up $6 trillion worldwide, so it’s clear why every company with a platform wants to embrace ecommerce. For businesses, this means finding more ways to sell to customers—even without relying on a corporate website.

While Instagram remains a dominant force, the rise of TikTok Shop and Facebook Shops has created a diversified ecosystem:

• Instagram
  Instagram continues to be a leader in visual commerce. Its refined “Checkout on Instagram” allows for frictionless, in-app transactions.

• TikTok
  Has become a powerhouse for “discovery-led” commerce. With the expansion of TikTok Shop, businesses can leverage viral content to drive immediate sales.

• Facebook
  Remains a cornerstone for localized and community-based selling with Facebook Shops and Marketplace.

A native “Shop” feature isn’t the only way to monetize your social presence. In fact, many businesses prefer the flexibility of payment links. By dropping a link into a TikTok bio, an Instagram Story, or a Facebook Messenger thread, businesses can drive sales without the technical overhead of managing a platform-specific storefront.

Payment platforms

Platforms act as the underlying infrastructure for your business. Providers such as Stripe handle security, encryption, and banking relationships. While they often offer full website integrations, their “out-of-the-box” tools, such as dashboard-based payment requests, allow you to manage your entire cash flow from a single login.

Invoicing software

For B2B or service-based businesses, professional invoices are the standard. Tools such as Stripe Invoicing allow you to send itemized invoices that include a “Pay Now” button. These systems automatically track when an invoice is opened and send reminders when it’s overdue, reducing your days sales outstanding (DSO).

Payment apps

Consumer-facing apps have expanded into business profiles. These are ideal for micro-merchants or “gig” workers who need to accept quick, informal payments. However, keep in mind that business-specific apps offer more robust reporting and tax documentation than their social counterparts.

Virtual terminals

A virtual terminal turns your computer or smartphone into a card-present terminal. By logging into your payment provider's portal, you can manually enter card details provided by a customer over the phone or in person. Using virtual terminals comes with inherent security risks because they require handling sensitive cardholder data, while alternatives like Tap to Pay allow businesses to accept in-person payments on an iPhone or Android device.

QR codes

QR codes act as a physical bridge to a digital checkout. By scanning a code displayed on a flyer, menu, or business card, a customer is instantly routed to a payment form on their own device. This “scan-to-pay” model has become a staple for contactless commerce, especially in the hospitality and events industries.

Digital marketplaces

Typically, marketplaces include built-in payment capabilities for the businesses that use them. If you are primarily processing sales on a third-party marketplace, and you aren’t interested in creating your own ecommerce channel, you might do just fine without your own website.

For example, Etsy is one prominent marketplace where individual merchants can create a storefront, share their products, and sell to customers directly, all without having to build their own website.

Downsides of using digital marketplaces for ecommerce

As appealing as marketplaces might be, there are a few downsides to relying on a marketplace for your entire ecommerce operation:

• Lack of control
  One of the biggest upsides to selling through a marketplace is also one of the biggest downsides: much of the customer experience is outside your control. This can mean an ecommerce environment that’s been designed with far greater resources than you might be able to afford on your own, but it may also mean aspects that you can’t control and might not love.

• Sharing space with competing businesses
  Selling through an ecommerce marketplace means that your business is not the only option available to customers. There’s no getting around the built-in competition that comes with the territory.

• Fees
  Of course, ecommerce marketplaces don’t host products for free. The costs and fees vary among different marketplaces, but it’s important to understand the economic tradeoffs of doing business this way. Compare marketplace fees for Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. Here’s another article explaining marketplace fees for other popular sites, including Etsy.

Benefits of not having a website as a business

It might seem like not having your own website to accept customer payments means you’re automatically sacrificing something—but that’s not necessarily true. There are important benefits to accepting online payments either through payment links or a third-party marketplace:

• Better checkout experience with less work on your part
  When you process customer payments through your own website, the burden is on you and your team to make sure the website functions flawlessly. But when you accept payments online directly through payment links or a third-party marketplace, you’re no longer responsible for creating the perfect checkout experience, which frees up time and resources for other aspects of your business.

• Increased conversion and fewer abandoned carts
  Ecommerce websites lose 70% to 75% of sales to abandoned carts. Less friction for customers during the checkout process means fewer abandoned carts and more sales.

• Boosted customer retention
  A Google survey found that 63% of consumers say they are less likely to purchase from a business again after a single negative experience. Having an easy, expertly designed checkout process keeps customers coming back.

• Ease of use
  For ecommerce businesses, there’s always pressure to create an online experience for customers that feels easy, fast, and optimized for conversion. However, building your own website can require significant investment in time and resources. When you use payment links instead, you skip to the desired end result: a polished, conversion-friendly experience for your customers.

• Flexibility
  When selling through your own website, you have to make important choices about every aspect of how you market your goods: from product descriptions and placement to branding and visuals. The challenge is that these choices usually can’t be optimized for every one of your audience segments simultaneously.

With payment links, you can create a hyper-tailored payment page for each target audience. You can test out different images and messaging, which gives each audience a customized experience while showing you which strategies most effectively boost sales.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.
  
• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.
  
• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.
  
• Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.
  
• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% historical uptime and industry-leading reliability.
  

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.