Connecting your Stripe account

Parsley Pay uses your own Stripe account to process payments. This means money goes directly to you — we never hold or handle your funds. You'll need a Stripe account and your Stripe API keys to get started.

Before you begin

You'll need a Stripe account. If you don't have one, sign up at stripe.com — it's free to create. Make sure your Stripe account is activated so it can accept live payments.

Step 1: Get your Stripe API keys

  1. Log in to your Stripe account at dashboard.stripe.com.
  2. Click Developers in the top navigation, then select API keys.
  3. You'll see a Secret key — click Reveal live key to view it. Copy the key (it starts with sk_live_).

Important: use your live secret key, not the test key. Test keys (starting with sk_test_) will not process real payments.

Step 2: Set up a webhook

Parsley Pay uses a Stripe webhook to detect payments, refunds, and disputes so your invoices are updated automatically.

  1. In Parsley Pay, go to Settings → Payments. You'll see a Webhook URL that is unique to your account — copy it.
  2. In your Stripe dashboard, go to Developers → Webhooks.
  3. Click Add endpoint and paste your webhook URL.
  4. Under Events to send, select the following events:
  • checkout.session.completed — payment confirmation
  • payment_intent.succeeded — backup payment confirmation
  • charge.refunded — refund tracking
  • charge.failed — failed payment logging
  • charge.dispute.created — dispute opened
  • charge.dispute.closed — dispute resolved
  1. Click Add endpoint, then copy the Signing secret shown on the webhook detail page.

Step 3: Add your keys to Parsley Pay

  1. In Parsley Pay, go to Settings → Payments.
  2. Paste your Stripe secret key into the Secret key field.
  3. Paste your webhook signing secret into the Webhook secret field.
  4. Click Save.

Both keys are encrypted immediately using AES-256-GCM and are never stored in plain text. We only decrypt them in memory when a payment needs to be processed.

Verifying the connection

Once saved, you can verify your Stripe connection is working by creating a test invoice and checking that the payment link loads correctly. If you see a Stripe Checkout page, you're all set.

Updating or rotating your keys

If you ever need to rotate your Stripe API keys, simply paste the new keys into the Settings page and save. Your old keys will be replaced immediately. Make sure to also update the webhook endpoint if you delete and recreate it in Stripe.

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