Getting Started Fresh

Start building with Stripe. This section covers environment setup, the API fundamentals, testing your integration, and everything you need before going live.

In this section

Page	What you'll learn
Development Setup	Install the Stripe CLI and server-side SDK
API Tour	How Stripe API objects fit together
Testing	Simulate payments in sandbox mode
Go-Live Checklist	Everything to verify before accepting real payments
SDKs	Official libraries for every platform
Dashboard	Navigate and use the Stripe Dashboard
Security	PCI compliance and TLS requirements

Quick orientation

Stripe's API is organized around REST. The API has predictable resource-oriented URLs, accepts form-encoded request bodies, returns JSON-encoded responses, and uses standard HTTP response codes, authentication, and verbs.

Key concepts before you build:

• Every Stripe resource is an object — PaymentIntent, Customer, Subscription, Invoice, etc.
• Objects track state over time (e.g., a PaymentIntent moves from requires_payment_method to succeeded)
• Your server communicates with Stripe using your secret API key — never expose it on the client
• Your frontend uses the publishable key and Stripe.js to collect payment details securely
• Webhooks let Stripe notify your server when asynchronous events complete

Authentication

All API requests use your secret key in an HTTP Basic Auth header:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges \
  -u sk_test_YOUR_KEY:

Note the trailing colon — the password field is intentionally empty.

Base URL

All API calls go to:

https://api.stripe.com/v1/

Request and response format

Requests use application/x-www-form-urlencoded encoding. Responses are always JSON.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/customers \
  -u sk_test_YOUR_KEY: \
  -d email="customer@example.com" \
  -d name="Mike Smith"

Response:

{
  "id": "cus_ABC123",
  "object": "customer",
  "email": "customer@example.com",
  "name": "Mike Smith",
  "created": 1700000000
}