Stripe is a payments platform that lets businesses accept and manage online payments through a single integration. It handles card payments, local payment methods such as iDEAL and Bancontact, subscriptions, invoices and payouts to marketplaces, plus fraud prevention and tax calculation. Stripe was founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison and is used by companies from small web shops to large platforms.
What Does Stripe Do?
- Payments: cards, wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and local methods such as iDEAL, Bancontact and SEPA Direct Debit.
- Checkout and Elements: a hosted payment page or embeddable payment forms, so card data never touches your servers.
- Billing: subscriptions, trials, usage-based pricing, upgrades and failed payment recovery.
- Invoicing: invoices that customers can pay online.
- Connect: payments for marketplaces and platforms, splitting money between the platform and sellers and paying them out.
- Radar: fraud detection based on signals across the Stripe network.
- Tax and Terminal: automatic sales tax and VAT calculation, and card readers for in-person payments.
How a Stripe Payment Works
Your application creates a PaymentIntent on the server with the amount and currency. The customer confirms the payment in Stripe's checkout or payment form, including any extra verification such as 3D Secure. Stripe processes the payment and notifies your system through a webhook, after which you fulfil the order. A reliable integration listens to those webhooks instead of relying on the customer returning to your site, uses idempotency keys so retries never charge twice, and is tested in Stripe's test mode before going live.
Stripe or Mollie?
For Dutch and Belgian businesses, Mollie is the common alternative: strong in local European payment methods and simple to set up. Stripe stands out with its platform features, such as Billing for complex subscriptions and Connect for marketplaces, and with broad international coverage. Many businesses choose based on their markets and on whether they run a single shop or a platform with multiple sellers.
How SemBricks Works With Stripe
We build Stripe integrations for web shops, SaaS platforms with subscriptions and marketplaces with payouts to sellers: checkout flows, webhook processing, subscription logic and reconciliation with your accounting. See our Stripe integration and API integration services. Stripe also works with Shopify and WooCommerce.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Stripe a bank?
No. Stripe is a payment processor: it processes payments and pays out the money to your bank account. Money is not held as a bank deposit.
Does Stripe support iDEAL?
Yes. iDEAL, Bancontact, SEPA Direct Debit and many other local payment methods are available alongside cards.
What does Stripe cost?
Stripe charges per transaction, with rates that differ by payment method and country. Check Stripe's own pricing page for current rates.
Can Stripe handle subscriptions?
Yes, with Stripe Billing: plans, trials, upgrades, usage-based pricing and automatic retries for failed payments.