How to Integrate Stripe into Your Mobile App?

Whether you are a small business or a large eCommerce platform, you always need to accept and process payments from your customers. If you offer your services or products through mobile applications, you obviously need to allow users to make in-app payments.

Building a payment processing system requires consideration of many aspects, including payment security, protection against fraud, refunds, and more. However, in most cases, you do not need to worry about this with existing solutions for payment processing systems.

Many payment systems support mobile platforms, so first of all, you need to choose one that will meet your business requirements, be safe, convenient, and fast and support the necessary payment methods.

In this blog post, we will talk about the Stripe payment system and its usage for mobile payments.

Stripe and its benefits for business

Stripe is an international system for secure online payments used by individuals and companies of various sizes and compatible with most bank cards worldwide. Stripe system is distinguished by high speed of payment processing and security, and from a business point of view - very convenient means of integration with websites and online stores.

Main benefits:
- Quick integration with any CMS;
- Instant acceptance and withdrawal of funds;
- Advanced anti-fraud system;
- Convenient payment window and customization options.

Using Stripe, you can accept payments using cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and others), Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

The Stripe commission varies depending on the method of payment. The commission is 2.9% + 30 ¢ per successful card charge for all cards and digital wallets. You can find more information about tariff plans on the service's website. The minimum payment amount depends on the currency of the bank card through which the payment is made. 

Stripe supports payment processing in more than 135 currencies. In addition, you can receive payments in any of the currencies available in account settings.

Among apps that use Stripe, there are Amazon, Apple, Etsy, Walmart, ASOS, etc.

Security standards compliance

Bank details are very sensitive data for the user and must be securely protected. For example, when transmitted through an unprotected environment, attackers can intercept them using a “man-in-the-middle” attack method. Therefore, anyone involved in storing, processing, or transferring cardholder data must comply with the Payment Card Industry Security Standards (PCI).

The Stripe payment system is certified as a PCI Level 1 Service Provider, which corresponds to a high level of security of payment data.

However, the PCI security standards are shared responsibility, and when you process payments, you have to do that according to the PCI standard’s requirements too.

Using Stripe in your app according to the guidelines, you will be compliant with PCI because you will not have direct access to the card data. And Stripe will do the heavy lifting to protect your users' card data.

All sensitive data that Stripe processes are encrypted using AES-256, and the system is built so that even none of Stripe's internal servers can obtain card data in clear text. 

The general process of Stripe setup

Stripe provides detailed instructions for Stripe mobile app integration and configuring payments for web and mobile platforms. That’s why we will not cover a lot of technical details here and describe the basic steps. But, in general, to accept the payments, you will need to:

1. Create your Stripe account. After registering, you will need to set the initial information about your account, including account name, country, time zone and business details, public business name, support email, and phone number.

Finally, you will obtain a secret and publishable key for payment processing in your back end.

2. Select payment methods that your app will support in Payment methods settings. You will need at least one selected payment method to work with Stripe.

3. Configure the server side and create endpoints communicating with the Stripe API and the client side. You can do this using the official libraries for accessing the Stripe API, which support Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Go, .NET and Node.js.

4. Configure the client side for mobile, using official native or cross-platform sdk for Android and IOS. Stripe provides prebuilt payment UI components, which support card payment methods, Google Pay, Apple Pay.

How do we integrate Stripe?

When our clients choose Stripe for payments processing in mobile apps, we manage the full cycle of integration, which includes:

1. Project setup

This step means the general setup process with Stripe registration and obtaining secret and publishable keys.

2. Implementing client-server communication.

In this step, we create the backend API which mobile clients will use. 

This endpoint will retrieve the existing customer details from Stripe, including previously used payment methods (if they exist). Next, it generates the paymentIntent with the amount, currency, and customer details and returns in API response.

The paymentIntent object represents your intent to collect payment from a customer, tracking your charge attempts and payment state changes throughout the process.

3. Work on UI parts and payments logic for the mobile apps.

In this step, we add the payments logic according to your business requirements and implement the Stripe payment flow.

For example, when a user wants to buy something from your app, they select the items, press the buy button, and go to the checkout screen. 

The app sends a request to the endpoint created in the previous step on the checkout screen and receives a paymentIntent.

Next, when the user presses the Checkout button, we show the Payment flow, where they can choose the payment method and make a payment.

Stripe mobile pay has two advantages here compared with other payment systems:

• for payment flow, you can use the prebuilt payment UI components in the form of a bottom sheet or implement a fully custom one;
• Stripe’s prebuilt payment UI components support Apple Pay and Google Pay by default and can be configured easily.

4. Testing the integration.

This step means testing the full implementation of payments logic. Stripe provides a testing environment to simulate transactions without the need to spend any money. For example, using a test mode, you can make a test transaction with a wide range of predefined bank cards for many brands and countries, and simulate payment errors like a decline, invalid data, etc. 

5. Deploying mobile payments to production.
6. Sdk updates.

When the new versions of Stripe Sdk are released, they may contain important updates and bug fixes. That’s why you must continuously support your implementation and keep library versions up to date. 

How much time is needed to integrate Stripe for mobile payments? 

The time required to integrate mobile payments with Stripe, like any other payment system, depends on the business and technical requirements and is individual in each case. For more information about the time scopes of Stripe mobile app integration according to your case, you can contact our technical specialists.

What team do you need for Stripe integration?

To integrate mobile payments with Stripe, you will need an Android and/or iOS developer, and backend developer. If you have a web version, the engagement of the frontend developer is also required. Contact us to find out precisely about the development team for Stripe mobile pay.

Conclusion

Stripe is a good choice if you want to add mobile payments to your app. It has a flexible api and clear documentation, which means that integration will proceed without additional edge cases.

There are thousands of apps that use Stripe. Obviously, there are dozens of payment systems that can be integrated into your app. And choosing the payment system which will fit your business requirements is always up to you. Our expertise is not limited only to Stripe, and we can integrate many payment systems depending on your preferences and goals.

If you need more information or you want to integrate mobile payments, you can always contact us. For more information about monetization in your app, check out our blog post App Monetization through the In-App Purchases.