Setting up Stripe
What Stripe actually asks for at activation, the order that avoids doing anything twice, and the tax settings that are easy to skip and expensive to skip.
Checked against the sources on 2026-08-30
Before you open the dashboard
Stripe activation is a know-your-customer check. It goes through in a day when you have the paperwork in hand and stalls for weeks when you improvise, so the fast path is to finish the business registration first and only then start here.
You will be asked for: what your business legally is and its registered address; your VAT ID if you have one; a bank account in the name of the business (for a sole trader, your own name - that is the same name); a website that says what you sell; and the identity document of whoever owns or represents the business.
The website matters more than people expect. Stripe reviews it, and so does the card network behind it. It needs to say what you sell and at what price, name the legal entity, and link to terms, a privacy notice and a refund policy. A landing page with a waiting list and no imprint fails this review.
The sequence
Create the account and answer the activation questions
Where: dashboard.stripe.comTakes: Half an hour of forms, then usually a day of review
Answer as the business, not as yourself - except as a sole trader, where you are the business and pick "individual / sole trader" rather than "company". Choosing "company" as a sole trader is the classic stall: Stripe then asks for a register extract that does not exist.
The bank account you add is where payouts land. It does not have to be at a German bank, but the account holder name must match the business.
Watch out: The activation form asks for a business description. Write what you actually sell, in plain words. Vague descriptions ("various digital services") get routed to manual review.
Decide how you charge before you build anything
Stripe is several products wearing one logo, and picking the wrong one costs a rebuild. Payment Links need no code at all - a URL per product, fine for a launch. Checkout is a Stripe-hosted payment page your site redirects to, and is the right default for almost everyone: it handles SCA, wallets, and tax display. Elements embeds the form in your own page and makes you responsible for everything Checkout was doing for you. Billing adds subscriptions, invoices, dunning and the customer portal on top of either.
For a subscription product: Products and Prices in the dashboard, Checkout in subscription mode, plus the customer portal so people can cancel themselves. A cancellation flow you have to hand-build is a support queue.
Turn on Stripe Tax
Takes: Ten minutes, and it is the ten minutes people skip
Stripe Tax computes the VAT per sale - which, for digital products sold to consumers across the EU, is the customer country’s rate once you are past the €10,000 threshold described in the country guides. It charges a small fee per transaction and replaces a spreadsheet you do not want to own.
It computes and collects, but it does not register you anywhere and it does not file. The One-Stop-Shop registration and the quarterly return stay yours; Stripe Tax gives you the report to file from.
Set your tax registration status in the dashboard first - including, for a German Kleinunternehmer, the fact that you charge no VAT at all. Stripe cannot know that unless told.
Webhooks, receipts and the customer-facing details
If anything in your product switches on when somebody pays, it must be switched on by a webhook - checkout.session.completed and the subscription lifecycle events - never by the browser landing back on your success page. The redirect is lost whenever a tab closes early, and payment without product is the worst bug a paid product can have.
Fill in the public details: statement descriptor (what appears on the card statement - an unrecognised one is a chargeback), support email, and receipts switched on. Test the whole path in test mode with the documented test cards, including a failed payment and a 3D-Secure challenge, before flipping live.
Watch out: Verify webhook signatures and handle retries idempotently - Stripe re-sends until you answer 200, and a handler that grants a month of access per delivery grants three months on a flaky day.
Payouts and the money side
Payouts run on a rolling schedule with a delay of a few days for a new account, shortening as the account ages. Money in Stripe is not money in the bank; do not spend it twice.
For bookkeeping, the number that matters is that Stripe pays out net of its fees. Book the gross sale and the fee separately - your accountant will ask, and the year-end Stripe report has both.
The traps
- Activating before the website has an imprint, terms and a refund policy. The review fails and you start over.
- Choosing "company" as a sole trader and being asked for a commercial register extract that does not exist.
- Granting access on the success-page redirect instead of the webhook.
- Pasting the publishable key (pk_live_...) where the webhook signing secret (whsec_...) belongs. Every delivery then fails signature verification, Stripe mails you that the endpoint is broken, and nothing anyone paid for switches on. The two live on different dashboard pages and both look like credentials; the signing secret is per-endpoint, under Developers → Webhooks.
- Skipping Stripe Tax settings as a Kleinunternehmer, and charging 19% VAT you then owe to nobody and must refund.
- Forgetting that Stripe Tax reports but does not register or file. The OSS registration is still your job.
- A statement descriptor that does not match your brand. Customers who do not recognise the charge dispute it, and disputes cost a fee win or lose.
- Building on Elements because it looks more professional, and inheriting SCA, wallet support and tax display that Checkout had already solved.
Where to check this yourself
- Stripe Docs - CheckoutThe default integration.
- Stripe Docs - TaxWhat it does and does not do.
- Stripe Docs - WebhooksSignatures, retries, event types.
- Your country guide on this siteThe VAT decision that Stripe Tax has to be told about.
This is a map, not legal or tax advice - and an honest one about how it was drawn: the Germany guide was written by a person who walked the route; most other countries were drafted with AI against the official sources and have not yet been walked by someone who did it. Laws change. Every guide carries the date it was last checked and the sources to check it yourself - and if you have been through one of these routes, your corrections are exactly what this handbook wants.