startupjs.ai Docs

Payments

The Payments plugin lets your site take real card payments. Checkout happens on Stripe's secure, familiar payment page, and the money goes straight to your own Stripe account — startupjs.ai is never in the middle of your revenue.

What you can build with it

Ask the AI Builder

"Sell my paintings — add a Buy button on each painting's page."

"Build a cart with checkout."

"Add an order-history page and a thank-you page after payment."

Completed payments appear as orders your site can show — each visitor sees only their own, you see all of them, and a guest's purchases follow them into their account if they sign up later.

Connecting your Stripe account

This plugin has no shared built-in mode — payments always run on your Stripe account, so the money is yours from day one. Setup takes a few minutes and starts in test mode:

The steps below are the same ones shown on the plugin's configuration page in your dashboard — that page is where "the field here" lives.

  1. Create a Stripe account at dashboard.stripe.com/register (business details can be finished later — test mode works right away).
  2. In the Stripe dashboard open Developers → API keys.
  3. Copy the Secret key. Start with the test key (sk_test_…) — you can place test orders with Stripe's test card 4242 4242 4242 4242, and the plugin shows a TEST MODE badge so you can't forget.
  4. Paste it into the field here. Optionally set your currency (defaults to usd).
  5. When you're ready to charge real cards: complete Stripe's business activation, then replace the key with the live one (sk_live_…).

The plugin registers its Stripe webhook automatically — you never need to touch the Webhooks page in the Stripe dashboard.

Test mode first

With a test key (sk_test_…) everything works end to end, except the money is pretend: use Stripe's test card number 4242 4242 4242 4242 with any future date and any code. The plugin shows a clear TEST MODE badge the whole time, so there's no forgetting which key is in. When you're ready, swap in the live key — nothing else changes.

Built-in protections

  • Price integrity. The amount charged always comes from your site's own data at the moment of purchase — a tampered page can never charge a made-up amount.
  • Orders are read-only. Neither visitors nor page bugs can edit or fake an order; orders are only ever created by verified, completed payments.
  • Your key stays secret. Like all credentials, the Stripe key is write-only — never visible in the dashboard, to the AI, or in chat.

Not available yet: recurring subscriptions and marketplace-style payouts to third parties. One-time payments — products, bookings, donations, tickets — are what this plugin does today.