Development quickstart

All accounts have a total of four keys: a publishable and secret key pair for test mode and live mode. Stripe APIs use your secret key to authenticate requests on your server. By default, your account’s secret keys can be used to perform any API request without restriction. You can find your keys on the API Keys page in the Developers Dashboard.

Stripe automatically populates code examples in our documentation with your test API keys while you’re logged in—only you can see these values. For your convenience, your test API keys for your account are:

If you can’t see your secret API keys in the Dashboard, this means you don’t have access to them. Contact your Stripe account’s owner and ask to be added to their team as a developer.

The server-side Stripe client libraries allow you to interact with Stripe APIs from your code. The libraries provide helpful methods for interacting with Stripe resources, such as your Stripe customers, products, and payments. For example, to use the “create” operation for the PaymentIntent API in Python, you’d use stripe.PaymentIntent.create() with your request parameters, and receive a PaymentIntent response object for your API version.

Libraries

# Available as a gem
sudo gem install stripe

# If you use bundler, you can add this line to your Gemfile
gem 'stripe'

iOS SDK

The iOS SDK is open source, fully documented, and compatible with apps supporting iOS 11 or above.

When your app starts, configure the SDK with your Stripe publishable key so that it can make requests to the Stripe API.

import UIKit
import Stripe

@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {

    func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {
        StripeAPI.defaultPublishableKey = 
"pk_test_TYooMQauvdEDq54NiTphI7jx"
        // do any other necessary launch configuration
        return true
    }
}

Android SDK

The Android SDK is open source and fully documented.

To install the SDK, add stripe-android to the dependencies block of your app/build.gradle file:

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

android { ... }

dependencies {
  // ...

  // Stripe Android SDK
  implementation 'com.stripe:stripe-android:20.1.0'
}

Configure the SDK with your Stripe publishable key so that it can make requests to the Stripe API, such as in your Application subclass:

import com.stripe.android.PaymentConfiguration

class MyApp : Application() {
    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        PaymentConfiguration.init(
            applicationContext,
            
"pk_test_TYooMQauvdEDq54NiTphI7jx"
        )
    }
}

There are also many third-party libraries created by the Stripe community so you can use a language we don’t officially support.

Let’s say a new customer purchases a product in your app. As soon as you know the payment amount, create the customer, and optionally save the customer payment details in Stripe. This allows a customer to use a saved payment method in your app. The following example shows how to Create a customer, then pass the customer identifier and save the payment method by passing setup_future_usage to Create a PaymentIntent. If your app doesn’t charge customers right away, see The SetupIntents API. We’ve pre-filled these code examples with your test secret API key—only you can see this value.

1. Create a customer and save the customer identifier from the response in id (for example, cus_Kc9ph4bLXyngqA).

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers \
  -u 
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc: \
  -d description="My First Test Customer"

1. Create a PaymentIntent with the customer identifier, and pass on_session to setup_future_usage. An on_session value indicates the customer is in the checkout flow of your app. An off_session value indicates the customer has exited out of your app.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/payment_intents \
  -u 
sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc: \
  -d customer=
"{{CUSTOMER_ID}}" \
  -d currency=usd \
  -d amount=2000 \
  -d "payment_method_types[]"=card \
  -d setup_future_usage=on_session

To learn more about this payment flow, see The PaymentIntents API.

You need to create a checkout page to collect customer payment information. You can use a prebuilt Stripe-hosted solution, or build a custom payment flow on the server-side using embeddable Stripe UI components. For a list of all payment integrations, such as creating a subscription, see the Payments guide.

Alternatively, you can use the Stripe CLI to call Stripe APIs in test mode directly from your terminal.

Stripe returns HTTP response codes to indicate the success or failure of your API requests. If you have any immediate errors (for example, a declined card), show the error message to your customer so they can try again. Use Stripe’s test credit card numbers to test the response handling of your payment integration. Start with a successful payment to make sure everything works. The payment status in these examples is returned in the Create a PaymentIntent response payload.

We’ve provided some of the more common test card scenarios for your convenience. Use them with any CVC, postal code, and future expiration date:

When you call Stripe APIs, Stripe logs the API call and events that represent this activity. You can view logs and event activity in the Developers Dashboard, or stream logs and events using the Stripe CLI or the Stripe for Visual Studio Code extension. Use incoming webhooks to receive these real-time events in your app. This allows your app to programmatically handle the order fulfillment flow, and any errors that can occur.

Stripe triggers a set of events in response to the Create a session API call for the Prebuilt Checkout page. Here are the typical one-time payment (not recurring) events that the checkout flow triggers.

To test a webhooks integration with the CLI, see Test a webhooks integration with the Stripe CLI.

After you send your first API request, Stripe assigns the latest API version to your account. This means all subsequent calls to Stripe APIs and your webhook event object payloads are shaped by this version, unless you specify a different version. You can find your default API version on the Developers Dashboard.

Stripe periodically releases new versions. Sign up for the Developer Digest to receive emails on the latest updates.