# Take card payments with Stripe > Connect your own Stripe account to accept cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay from customers anywhere in the world — with a restricted key that can't touch your money. Guide: https://sitesplaced.com/help/payments-and-orders/connect-stripe · Section: Payments & Orders · Last reviewed: 2026-08-26 **Stripe** lets your store take **card, Apple Pay and Google Pay** payments from customers almost anywhere in the world. It is the usual way to get paid in dollars, pounds and euros, so it is what you want if you sell to customers outside India. You connect **your own** Stripe account, and every payment lands in **your** Stripe balance — SitesPlaced is never in the middle and takes no cut. ## Before you start You need a Stripe account that can already accept payments. If you don't have one, sign up at stripe.com and finish their onboarding — they will ask for your business details and a bank account to pay you into. If Stripe hasn't finished verifying you yet, connecting here will fail with a message telling you so; that's Stripe's check, not ours. > **Stripe and Razorpay can both be on:** If you sell to Indian and overseas customers, connect both. Your customers then see **Pay online with Razorpay** (UPI, cards, net banking) and **Pay online with Stripe** (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay) side by side at checkout and pick whichever suits them. ## Create a restricted key Stripe gives you two kinds of secret key. The **secret key** (`sk_live_…`) can do everything in your account — move money, read your customers, change your settings. A **restricted key** (`rk_live_…`) can do only the specific things you allow. **We ask for a restricted key**, and you should never paste your full secret key into any website builder, ours included. 1. Sign in to Stripe and open **Developers → API keys** ([dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys](https://dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys)). 2. Click **Create restricted key**. 3. Give it a name you'll recognise later, such as *SitesPlaced store*. 4. Set these four permissions to **Write** or **Read** as listed, and leave everything else as **None**: **Checkout Sessions — Write**, **PaymentIntents — Read**, **Webhook Endpoints — Write**, **Refunds — Write**. 5. Click **Create key**, then **Reveal** it and copy the value. It starts with `rk_live_`. 6. In your store dashboard, open **Settings → Payments & invoices**, paste the key into the **Stripe** card, and click **Connect Stripe**. > **Why those four permissions:** **Checkout Sessions** creates the payment page your customer lands on. **PaymentIntents** lets us check that a payment really succeeded before we mark an order paid. **Webhook Endpoints** lets us set up order notifications for you, so you never have to copy a signing secret by hand. **Refunds** is only needed if you want to refund from your SitesPlaced dashboard — leave it off if you'd rather refund inside Stripe. ## What we do with your key - It is **encrypted** before it is stored, and it is stripped out of every page your website sends to a browser. It never appears in your site's source. - It can only do the four things you allowed. Even if it leaked, nobody could move your money or read your customer list with it. - **Payments go straight from your customer to your Stripe balance.** We never hold your money, and we cannot pay ourselves out of it. - **Disconnect** removes the key from our systems and deletes the notification endpoint we set up in your Stripe account. You can also delete the key yourself in Stripe at any time — that stops it working immediately. ## What your customers see Once connected and switched on, checkout shows a **Card payment** option. Choosing it sends the customer to Stripe's own payment page, and back to your store afterwards. Because it's Stripe's page, **Apple Pay and Google Pay appear automatically** on phones that support them, and the extra bank-approval step European and UK cards require is handled for you. Which wallets and extras (Klarna, Afterpay, Link) appear is up to your own Stripe dashboard settings — turn them on there and they show up at your checkout with nothing to change here. ## Sales tax You are the seller, so sales tax is yours to handle — we never calculate it. If you use **Stripe Tax**, turn it on in your Stripe dashboard, then tick **Add tax at checkout using Stripe Tax** on the Stripe card in your settings, and Stripe will work the tax out at checkout. In the United States, states can require you to collect sales tax once you pass a certain amount of sales there (commonly around $100,000 or 200 orders in a year, but it varies). If you're near that, talk to an accountant. ## Refunds Refund from your Stripe dashboard. The order in SitesPlaced is marked **refunded** automatically. If the order included **digital downloads**, the download link is *not* switched off automatically — a refund isn't always a withdrawal of the files. To disable it, open the order and use **Disable** on the download. ## If something goes wrong **Q: It says my key is missing a permission.** Go back to Developers → API keys in Stripe, click the ⋯ menu next to your restricted key, choose **Edit key**, and set the four permissions listed above. Save, then connect again with the same key. **Q: It says the account can't accept payments yet.** Stripe hasn't finished verifying your business. Open your Stripe dashboard — there will be a banner telling you what they still need. Once that clears, connect again. **Q: My key was rejected.** Check you copied a live key (starting rk_live_), not a test one (rk_test_). Test keys only work with Stripe's test cards and will not take real payments. **Q: A customer paid but the order still says pending.** Give it a few seconds and refresh — the confirmation usually arrives immediately, but Stripe occasionally takes longer. If it's still pending after a few minutes, check **Developers → Webhooks** in Stripe for an endpoint ending in /api/webhooks/stripe/. If it isn't there, disconnect and reconnect and we'll recreate it. **Q: Can I use Stripe for Indian customers?** For rupee payments, Razorpay is the better fit — it supports UPI, which is how most Indian customers prefer to pay. Use Stripe for overseas customers paying by card.