Taking the payment is the easy half of a Stripe integration.
Most of the work in a payment integration is not the checkout. It is everything after: the refund, the failed card, the subscription that lapsed, the settlement that will not match the invoice your accountant is holding.
Stripe is the one we reach for when the customer is outside India. For rupee collections from Indian customers a local gateway is usually simpler, and we will say so before you have paid for anything.
Stripe is a payment company. Your application tells Stripe what to charge, and Stripe collects the card details on a page it serves itself, so they never touch your server. Later it pays the money into your bank account minus its fee, and it tracks subscriptions so a monthly plan renews and retries without you writing that yourself.
Where it earns its place.
What we build with it
- Card checkout for customers outside India
- Subscription billing with plans, trials and upgrades
- Invoices carrying a payment link the customer can open
- Refunds and part refunds from inside your own admin screen
- Webhooks that mark the invoice paid in your system, not only in Stripe
- A settlement report your accountant can match to the bank
What Stripe decides, not us
This is the part people are surprised by, so it is worth saying before the build starts.
- Whether they will accept your kind of business at all
- Which countries and currencies you may charge in
- When the money settles, and how long a first payout is held
- Their fee, and when it changes
- Who wins a chargeback, and what evidence they will look at
- When a saved card mandate stops being valid
We build the integration and the records around it. What settles, when, and to whom is decided by Stripe and by the card networks, and those rules change without asking us.
Stripe or a local gateway
Often both, on the same system. The customer’s location decides it rather than a preference of ours.
- Rupee collections from Indian customers, usually Razorpay or Cashfree
- UPI, which is where Indian customers actually pay
- Cards from abroad and foreign currency, usually Stripe
- Recurring billing in dollars, usually Stripe
- Export paperwork, which Indian rules attach to money coming in
Where you sell both ways the system takes either, and your reports still add up at the end of the month. That is a design decision, made once and made early.
The parts that cause trouble later
- Checkout
- Webhook
- Ledger
- Refund
- Reconciliation
- A webhook arriving twice, handled so the customer is not credited twice
- A payment that succeeds while the customer closes the browser
- Fees and currency conversion recorded, so the bank statement matches
- Test keys left in production, the classic launch morning failure
- Card numbers never stored on your side, so the question never arises
What stays with your business
We build the mechanism. The obligations do not move to us because software now handles them.
- Your terms, your refund policy and what you tell customers
- The Stripe account, the bank account and the checks behind them
- Tax treatment of foreign receipts, with your chartered accountant
- Answering a chargeback inside the window Stripe gives you
We do not certify anything and we are not anybody’s auditor. Where a duty is yours, we write it on the plan rather than leave it unsaid.
When this is the right choice.
- You sell to customers outside India and charge their cards in their currency
- A subscription product where plans, trials and renewals matter
- A SaaS product billing monthly without anybody raising an invoice by hand
- You want a payment link to start with rather than a full checkout
- Your system has to know the payment happened, not just your inbox
When it is not.
- Collecting rupees from Indian customers, where a local gateway and UPI cost less and convert better
- Cash on delivery and counter sales, where the payment never touches the internet
- A business Stripe does not accept, which is worth checking on their site before the project starts
- A shop that needs only a payment link, since the platform you already use may issue one with no development
Questions we are asked about it.
Does Stripe work in India?
Yes, with an Indian entity and the account checks that go with it, and it is used mostly for money arriving from abroad. For domestic rupee collection, Razorpay or Cashfree usually serve an Indian business better.
Can we use Stripe and Razorpay together?
Yes, and plenty of systems should. The application picks by where the customer is, and both feed the same invoice and the same report, so your accounts do not split into two halves.
Where are the card details stored?
On Stripe, never on your server. The customer types them into a page Stripe serves, which keeps your system out of the question entirely. That is the single most useful thing about the arrangement.
What happens when a subscription payment fails?
Stripe retries on its own schedule and tells your system each time. What you do about it, chase, suspend or wait, is your policy, and we build the reminders and the access rules around whatever you choose.
How do refunds work?
From your own admin screen, with the reason recorded against the order. The money returns by the route it came, and how long it takes to appear is the card issuer’s decision rather than ours or Stripe’s.
What about GST and foreign currency?
The system records what was charged, the fee taken and the conversion, so your chartered accountant has the numbers in front of them. How those receipts are treated is their judgement, not something the software settles.
Services that use it.
Not sure Stripe is the right choice?
Tell us what the software has to do and who opens it. If something else fits better, we will say so, and say why.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private