Connect your own Stripe account

Who this is for

You already have a Stripe account and would rather hold your own key than onboard through Stripe Connect. Functionally the two are the same; this one just asks you to find a key.

Where to get the key

Stripe Dashboard → Developers → API keys (dashboard.stripe.com/apikeys).

Create a restricted key, not your full secret key. Press Create restricted key and give it write access to these five resources, which is everything kitty uses and nothing more:

• Prices — to create the price behind a buy button
• Payment Links — the checkout itself
• Webhook Endpoints — so kitty can register its own webhook
• Subscriptions — to mirror your subscribers and MRR
• Events — how every incoming webhook is verified

A key that starts rk_live_ is a restricted key. One that starts sk_live_ is your full account key — it will work, but it grants far more than kitty needs.

Connecting

Settings → Connections → Take payments → the Stripe card → Connect → paste the key → Save and connect.

Then press Test connection. It comes back naming the Stripe account it reached, which is how you catch pasting a key from the wrong account.

The webhook

Nothing to do. Stripe is one of only two providers where kitty registers its own webhook endpoint on your account.

If you ever want to see it, it appears in your Stripe dashboard under Developers → Webhooks, described as a kitty.build revenue sync for a specific venture.

What you get

Cards and wallets, subscriptions with trials, the failed-payment recovery ladder, refunds issued from kitty, and real revenue and MRR on the venture dashboard.

Booking deposits also work on Stripe, and only on Stripe — it is the only provider that carries a reference which survives the round trip back to the appointment being held.

After it's connected

Test connection proves the key works right now, and names the account it reached — so a member with two logins can see they pasted the wrong one. Do that before you put anything on sale.

Then, in Where new checkouts go, pick this provider on its own or One page, every method, which offers every provider you've connected on a single page and quietly hides one that starts failing.

Anything already on sale keeps the provider it was armed on. A price, once created at a provider, cannot be moved — so to switch, open the venture's Revenue tab, Take off sale, then put it back on sale.

How the keys are stored

Encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, used server-side only, never returned to the browser, never written to a log, and never shown again after saving.

Payment keys are scoped to a venture or the whole workspace, never to you personally — two businesses in one workspace settle into two different bank accounts, so a personal key is refused for money on purpose.