Terminal Fresh

Accept in-person payments with Stripe Terminal — hardware card readers integrated into your point-of-sale application.

Section overview

Page	Description
Quickstart	Set up a simulated reader and process your first in-person payment
Readers	Hardware specifications and available models

How Terminal works

1. Your POS application creates a PaymentIntent on your server
2. Your application tells the reader to process the payment
3. The customer presents their card (tap, insert, or swipe)
4. The reader sends card data to Stripe
5. Stripe authorizes the payment and returns the result
6. Your application captures the PaymentIntent

Two integration modes

Mode	Description	Best for
Server-driven	All reader commands are API calls from your server	Web-based POS, cloud-connected hardware
SDK	Mobile/desktop SDK controls the reader locally	iOS, Android, React Native, JavaScript POS apps

Locations

Organize readers into Locations. Locations tell readers which configuration to download for their region. You must assign a Location to each reader when registering it.

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/terminal/locations \
  -u "sk_test_YOUR_KEY:" \
  -d display_name="Main Store" \
  -d "address[line1]=123 Main St" \
  -d "address[city]=San Francisco" \
  -d "address[state]=CA" \
  -d "address[country]=US" \
  -d "address[postal_code]=94111"

Supported payment methods

• Credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover)
• Contactless / NFC (Apple Pay, Google Pay)
• Chip and PIN
• Magnetic stripe (where required by hardware)

Testing without hardware

Use the simulated reader to build and test your integration without physical hardware:

• Register code: simulated-s700 (S700 reader)
• Register code: simulated-wpe (WisePOS E)

The simulated reader accepts all standard Stripe test cards.

Supported countries

Terminal is available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and select EU countries. Verifone reader support is in public preview for the US, Canada, Ireland, and the UK.