Take payments in your app

Your app can sell products, take a deposit for a booking, charge a monthly membership, or let sellers get paid while your app keeps a fee. Card payments go through Stripe, so card numbers never touch your app.

What crisp builds#

• The pay button, which opens a secure Stripe payment page.
• An order for each payment, with its amount and its state: pending, paid, failed or refunded.
• For plans that renew: the plans page, a Manage billing page run by Stripe where customers change plan, update their card or cancel, and checks that only paying customers reach paid features.
• Refunds from your own admin page, discount codes, and tax worked out by Stripe if you ask for it.
• For marketplaces: seller sign-up through Stripe, payouts to sellers, and your fee on every sale.
• A confirmation from Stripe for every payment, so an order is only marked as paid when the money arrived.

Until Stripe is connected, everything else works, and the pay button shows Payments are not set up yet.

Connect Stripe#

1. 1 Open the More menu in the top bar of your project and choose Payments. When crisp asks for Stripe in the chat, the Set up payments button opens the same panel.
2. 2 Choose Create a Stripe test account if you see it: it is ready in a few seconds. Otherwise paste the test secret key of your Stripe account. In Stripe, it is under Developers, then API keys, in test mode, and starts with sk_test_.
3. 3 That is all. crisp tells Stripe where to send payment updates for your app, and keeps it up to date when your app moves or is published.

The AI that builds your app never sees your keys. They are stored encrypted and given only to your app.

Test a payment#

Your preview always takes test payments. Pay with Stripe's test card number 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future date and any three digits. No real money moves. Then check that the order shows as paid. In the preview, Stripe's page opens in a new tab.

Take real payments#

1. 1 Finish your account details in Stripe, so Stripe lets you take real payments. If crisp made your test account, choose Claim in Stripe in the Payments panel first: the account and its products become yours.
2. 2 In the Payments panel, choose Add live key and paste your live secret key. It starts with sk_live_.
3. 3 Tick the box to confirm that customers will be charged real money, and choose Turn on real payments.
4. 4 Publish your app. The publish panel says Payments are real before you publish.

Your preview stays in test mode. To go back, choose Switch back to test payments and publish again.

Outside Stripe's countries#

If Stripe does not take new accounts where you are, for example in India, ask crisp to use Razorpay. If you want a company to handle sales tax and VAT for you, ask for Polar. These use keys you add as secrets, and crisp tells you where to set up their payment updates.