Stripe is an online financial service used by millions of companies of all sizes to process payments, send payouts, and automate financial processes. It helps businesses overcome the barriers of e-commerce and grow their revenue. 


If you already have an account on Stripe, you can link it to your Spheremail account to collect and process your customers' payments in real-time, following these steps:


A) On Stripe:

  • Create a Stripe account if you don't have one at Stripe.com
    Or sign in to your Stripe account and head to the dashboard
  • Click on the Developers option at the bottom left of your dashboard
  • Head to the API Keys tab
  • Click to create a new restricted key*

  • When asked "How will you use this API key?" please choose "Providing this key to another website" then click "Continue":


  • Name it "SphereMail Payment Gateway", for example, or any other name as you see fit. 
  • Add your SphereMail URL, and mark the "Customize permissions for this key" checkbox, then click "Continue" to proceed to the permissions.
  • Allow "Write" permissions for the needed resources**:

    - Charges
    - Customers
    - Payment Intents
    - Payment Methods
    - Setup Intents
    - Tokens
    - Webhook Endpoints
  • Click "Create key" to save your changes
  • Copy the newly created restricted key
     

Notes:  
* Starting June 2024, Stripe will require the use of Restricted API keys (RAK) on all gateway connections with SphereMail, instead of using Standard Secret keys. If you still have your gateway set up with the secret key after June 2024, you'll start facing interruptions and errors while processing payments.
** While you have the freedom to customize the key permissions, SphereMail needs to have writing permissions for related core resources mentioned above to be able to connect and send charges to your Stripe account to be processed and logged accordingly.



B) On your Spheremail account:

  • Go to "Business Settings"
  • Click the "Payments" tab
  • Click the "Update payment gateway" button
  • Choose Stripe from the drop-down menu
  • Paste the restricted key you copied from Stripe
  • Click Update




And now you're all set! Any future customer payments will now be processed using your connected Stripe account.