The first step to accepting payments in your WooCommerce store is connecting to Stripe via StellarPay. StellarPay’s deep integration with Stripe allows you to connect your store with a few clicks.

Prerequisite: Have an Active Stripe.com account #

Before you connect your store to Stripe.com, you must have an active Stripe.com account. Here are some resources to consider:

• Overview of Signing up for Stripe
• Make sure the Stripe features you need are supported in your country
• Understand Stripe fees

Once you are signed into your Stripe.com account, proceed to installing and activating StellarPay.

The Getting Started Screen #

Once you install and activate StellarPay, you’ll be taken directly to the Getting Started screen.

From there you click on the “Connect to Stripe” button to be taken to Stripe.com for authentication.

NOTE: If your website does not support HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate, you’ll get a notice at the top and will not be able to connect securely to Stripe. Read our guide on ensuring your store is secure with SSL here.

From there you’ll go through a quick authentication process with Stripe.com to give your website access to your Stripe account. When that process is successful, you’ll be redirected back to your website and get a congratulatory message from StellarPay.

What’s Happening During Connection #

In order to collect payments using Stripe and WooCommerce, StellarPay (software installed on your WordPress website) needs to be authenticated to perform transactions with your Stripe account. This is done by connecting using an OAuth flow that prevents your Stripe.com credentials from ever being exposed to your StellarPay website.

Additionally, Stripe needs to be able to communicate back to your website when certain events happen in the Stripe account. This is done using a feature of Stripe called “webhooks”

Important: Both of those issues are securely handled in the connection process to Stripe during onboarding. You don’t need to understand any of this to get connected, but knowing what’s happening is super helpful in the event that something needs troubleshooting. The StellarWP support team stands ready to help as well.

OAth Connection to Stripe #

Under the hood, when you select to “Connect to Stripe,” you’re redirected to Stripe’s website to grant permission for access. Stripe authenticates your user and generates an access token, which it sends back to your StellarPay site. This token allows the store to securely interact with Stripe’s API (to do things like processing payments or issuing refunds) on your behalf, without ever exposing your Stripe credentials directly to your WooCommerce site.

Stripe Webhooks #

When something happens at Stripe that was not initiated from the WooCommerce/StellarPay side, Stripe needs a method to alert and update the records on the StellarPay site. Enter the concept of webhooks.

Webhooks have two “parts” that are helpful to understand: events and endpoints.

Webhook endpoints are specific public URLs that you (or StellarPay on your behalf, in this case) authorize to receive notification when things happen (events) on the Stripe side.

There are over 100 event types that can be sent over a webhook, but StellarPay authorizes Stripe to send only these 12 events:

• account.updated
• charge.refund.updated
• charge.refunded
• charge.updated
• customer.subscription.created
• customer.subscription.deleted
• customer.subscription.updated
• invoice.paid
• payment_intent.canceled
• payment_intent.payment_failed
• payment_intent.succeeded
• subscription_schedule.canceled

Any time one of those events happens, Stripe sends the event, a token proving to StellarPay that the event is actually being sent from Stripe, and enough data to verify that the event is referencing something (a customer, charge, invoice, payment, etc) that also exists on the StellarPay side. That way StellarPay can be used with Stripe accounts that are also connected to other systems (for example: GiveWP for donations.)

NOTE: if you are testing transactions in Test Mode, you may need to ensure that a webhook was created in both live and test mode on your Stripe account. There’s a toggle at the top of the webhooks page that you can use to verify those are set correctly.

Next Steps #

Now you’re connected to Stripe.com and can begin accepting payments through your WooCommerce store. Congrats!

On this screen you can subscribe to the StellarWP newsletter, and proceed to enable StellarPay as your payment solution in your WooCommerce settings.