This chapter follows Subscriptions in Stripe.
The chapters before this one cover Customers, Products and Prices, Checkout, the Payment Element, webhooks, and subscriptions—enough to ship a typical web app. Stripe’s surface area is larger: platforms, tax, and hardware each have their own APIs and compliance rules. The sections below are pointers, not integration guides.
Stripe Connect
Connect lets your platform pay connected accounts— sellers on a marketplace, creators, or service providers. You onboard users with Connect accounts, route charges with application fees or separate charges and transfers, and handle payouts to bank accounts. Modern platform setups use Accounts v2 APIs with explicit controller properties for who owns losses and requirements.
If you only sell your own product, you do not need Connect. If money flows to third parties you do not employ, Connect is the usual answer. Details live in Stripe’s Connect documentation.
Billing and usage-based models
Subscriptions in this series use Stripe Billing’s recurring Prices. Usage-based billing (metered seats, API calls, gigabytes) often pairs Billing meters with aggregation—or, for greenfield usage models, Stripe’s Metronome acquisition path for high-volume metering. Pick one model early; retrofits are painful.
Stripe Tax
Stripe Tax calculates and collects sales tax, VAT, or GST based on registrations you configure. It integrates with Checkout (automatic_tax) and custom PaymentIntents when registrations exist. Enabling tax without registrations produces no tax while looking enabled—configure registrations before turning automation on (see Products and prices).
Fraud and identity
Radar adds rules and scores on charges to block fraud. Identity verifies government IDs or selfies for regulated flows. Both sit beside payments: enable in Dashboard, tune rules, and listen to related events if your compliance team requires audit trails.
Invoicing, Payment Links, and Terminal
| Product | Use when |
|---|---|
| Invoicing | You email PDF invoices and accept bank transfer or card pay-by-link |
| Payment Links | No-code shareable URLs for a Price without building Checkout yourself |
| Terminal | In-person card readers; PaymentIntents use payment_method_types: ['card_present'] |
Treasury and Financial Accounts target embedded banking for platforms that hold balances—closer to fintech than to a simple Checkout integration.
Next: Stripe cheat sheet.