I'm trying to work out the correct method of attributing payments on invoices that are automatically created after a user purchases something on site, payment handled by Stripe (or other payment gateway). Here is the current flow from user action to Xero interaction (all working fine):
User purchases membership on site
Payment is processed by Stripe on-site
If payment is successful, an Invoice is generated in Xero (and a contact if it doesn't exist)
Payment is added to the invoice immediately after it is generated, and it's status is set to Paid.
Paid invoice is emailed to new member from Xero
Stripe deposits money in nominated business account each day
I have two questions about this workflow
What is the normal practise for dealing with PaymentAccount when applying a payment? Should we create a new payment account just for Stripe? A new "Bank" account for Stripe? The context of this question is selecting the correct PaymentAccount ID for the payment when creating the invoice.
Will reconciliation still be possible for these paid invoices when Stripe sends payments (assuming they send itemised payments)? Even if the money is deposited in a different (Real) account integrated in Xero?
Thanks
Your questions about stripe are more appropriate in Xero forums, since they are bookkeeping questions not API qestions.
Stripe can provide a bank feed to Xero, and you should set this up.
This means you have a Stripe bank account, which is the therefore the payment account. Payment reconcilations are easy (but can't be done via API).
The actual deposit of real money into a real bank account will be a consolidated amount typically called a 'settlement', typically one day of transactions, less fees, refunds and possible timing issues etc. The Stripe bank feed will have an entry for this. It is reconciled by a Xero user as a bank transfer between the Stripe bank and the real bank, and is nothing to do with the payment on the invoice.
Related
Pretty new to Stripe, we're building an online marketplace. Each user can buy assets from any other user. We also take fees for each payment.
We go with connected accounts. Seller goes through the onboarding flow (create connected account, create account link etc), while buyer is registered as a customer of our platform on Stripe.
Now, whenever buyer makes a payment we create a payment intent to pay to us (amount + 20% fee via):
stripe.paymentIntents.create(params)
Then we create new payout to seller (amount) using source transaction from payment intent above:
await stripe.transfers.create({
amount: payment.amount * 100,
currency: payment.currency,
destination: seller.stripeAccountId,
source_transaction: sourceTransaction,
});
Is this the preferred and best way of handling this? In terms of time, we need first to wait for payment to settle to our bank account to be able to payout seller?
Is there any better way of doing this instead of manual payouts?
Is there a way to make direct transfer to connected account when user does payment?
I tried with payment intent, specifying connected account id in request, but API is complaining that customer id is on our platform but account id is specified, so it's not possible obviously.
Also, manual payouts would come handy to simulate payment escrow/deposit. When user create a request for some asset, we would immediately transfer certain amount to our account, like reserving that amount. And if the seller accepts the offer, we would do a payout. If seller rejects the offer, we would do payout to the buyer, giving him back his money.
Does this make sense?
Thanks in advance
You don't need Payout (yet) in your use case. You are doing Separate Charges and Transfers, and fund simply moves from your Account's balance to Connected Account's balance. It hasn't been out of your Connected Account's balance to your Connected Account's bank account yet, which is called "Payout".
In another word, Payout is separated process than Charges and Transfers. Charges and Transfers can happen immediately, and Payouts normally happen later on a daily basis or manually.
Find more explanation on Connect Balance.
There is also Destination Charge which is simpler than Separate Charges and Transfers. I recommend Destination Charge unless you have specific reason to use Separate Charges and Transfers, ie. you need to transfer to multiple Connected Accounts on one payment.
We have our own payment processing system. This takes a customer token from Stripe's response after initially checking out, and uses it each month to charge the customers card.
We want to do similar for mobile wallets, like Apple Pay.
However, Stripe docs indicate that it only returns a token which is 'single use', so the customer would have to authenticate the payment each month:
We aren't able to integrate with Stripe's 'subscriptions' service, as we'd have to migrate across entirely to Stripe - which we can't do.
So as a result, is it possible to get a reusable token - or does the 'subscription' it's referring to mean that we can get a reusable token in the same way as a standard card payment?
And by reusable token - I mean, the customer doesn't need to authenticate the payment each month.
Hope that makes sense!
When you accept an Apple Pay payment, you can still save the underlying card for future payments. This will then work whether you use Billing (their recurring payments product) or just create one-time payments yourself.
The call out from Stripe in their docs is more around the rules coming from Apple. If your customer is checking out in your application or website, you are expected to show them the Apple Pay UI to confirm the payment again instead of using a previously saved card. On the other hand, if you are doing recurring payments, you can use the previously saved card for future payments.
The integration itself is fairly straightforward. You would create a PaymentIntent server-side and collect the card details client-side whether via Apple Pay or not. Since you want to save card details for future payments you would also pass setup_future_usage: 'off_session' on the PaymentIntent creation. After a successful payment, a PaymentMethod of type card would be attached to the customer with the id pm_123 and you could use this in future recurring payments.
This flow is covered in Stripe docs here and also applies to Apple Pay and this section covers how to make the future payments.
I am looking for a way to make payment to a customer like a business do.
for eg. a business will ask you to fill the form with bank name, acoount number IFSC code etc.
so customer can receive a payment.
I have user who is having a digital wallet with some amount.
I want to transfer the amount to user's provided bank account on the request.
I saw stripe documentation but I am not sure if stripe support custom payment.
Stripe provides refund as per below method where I have to provide charge id string
and because of charge id stripe will refund only the amount which was charged earlier and this is linked to particular charge only.
const stripe = require('stripe')('your_stripe_key');
const refund = await stripe.refunds.create({
charge: 'charge_id_string',
amount: 100,
});
I want to make custom payment/refund so I can transfer users wallet available balance to bank account.
Any suggestion will be appreciated.
I don't think you should use Refund because you can only create a refund based on an existing charge.
You should probably look at Transfer, which allows you to send funds from your Stripe account to a connected account. In your use case, you should create a connected account for your customer so that you can transfer refunds to your customer and eventually payout to their bank account.
Visit here to learn more about Stripe Connect.
I charge Customers using this guide https://stripe.com/docs/connect/destination-charges adding amount, application fee and Service provider accound_id, after that I listen for "charge.succeeded" event with webhooks. If the payment was successful I generate invoice using this this guide - https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/connect, but I get this error
"Nothing to invoice for customer"
Is it possible Stripe automatically to create Invoice for me?
Do I have to manually create this invoice and then make it paid.
Should I generate the Invoice before Payment or after Payment?
When you process a payment, Stripe will send your customers a receipt automatically per your email settings [1]. In some respects, this receipt serves as an invoice of services rendered, and might be sufficient for your needs. You can see an example of what a receipt will look like for a given payment by looking at a given payment in the dashboard (under the 'Receipt history' heading).
Now, if the receipt automatically generated by Stripe doesn't meet your needs (e.g., you want to be able to list more customer info on there), then you'll want to use the Invoices API [2] instead of the Payment Intents API to process the payment. Using the Invoices API also allows you send the invoice to the customer so they can initiate payment on their own [3].
So, with that out of the way, if you intend to create Invoices for your customers you need to first create Invoice Items on the Customer and then create an invoice off that Customer. Once you finalize the Invoice, Stripe will either process a payment automatically under the hood, or send the Invoice to your Customers via email so they can initiate the payment (through a Stripe hosted page). At that point you can send your customers a copy of the Invoice PDF. With this integration there is no need to process the payment on your own or deal with any other APIs. The Invoices API takes care of everything for you. These steps are documented in detail here:
https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/create
To answer your questions more directly:
No. Stripe will only automatically create invoices when you make subscriptions. But, Stripe does automatically create receipts as described above.
Yes, you manually would need to add Invoice Items to the Customer, then create an Invoice off that Customer. Note that this step will also charge the customer, so you don't need to do that separately.
Invoices process the payment under the hood once they are finalized.
[1] https://stripe.com/docs/receipts
[2] https://stripe.com/docs/billing/invoices/create
[3] https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoices/create#create_invoice-collection_method
I am using Stripe for online payments but also users can pay offline (cash or check). I want to centralize all my invoices/charges in one place (Stripe).
I am not sure if I can add offline payments (cash or check) to stripe or not. I guess I can if I created customers, invoices, charges with livemode=false for my live keys.
Is this feasible and will Stripe accept having some (customers, invoices and charges) with livemode=false and others with livemode=true?
If yes, should I fill fake credit card info or should I set it as nil?
Stripe does not allow you to create a Subscription on a Customer if you don't have a credit card setup. More accurately, it does not allow you to create a subscription if a customer does not have a way to pay for the next invoice. So for offline payments, you could update the 'account_balance' on the customer to have a negative value equal to the amount the customer wired (credits). Stripe will then allow you to create a subscription for the customer because it knows that the customer has enough account balance to pay for the next invoice. This post has more details.
We don't currently support offline payments, so you'll want to look at a separate accounting system for those payments.
That said, it's totally understandable that you'd want to keep this data in one place. You might be interested in using our webhooks system to offer live updates to your accounting system without directly touching the code that creates the charge in Stripe.