Stripe Payments End to End: Card Checkout to Payout, API Integration and Revenue Model

In a technical round of a product manager interview, you are asked to explain how Stripe works. Explain what Stripe does for the businesses that use it, and what happens behind the scenes when a customer pays one of them online. ```hint Follow one payment Pick a single card purchase on an online store. Track the information and the money separately: who is asked for approval, who moves the funds, and when the store actually receives them. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should I focus on accepting a single online card payment, or also cover Stripe's broader products, such as subscriptions, marketplace payouts and in-person payments? - Is the listener non-technical, or an engineer who wants to hear about the API and how a developer integrates it? - Should the answer cover the business side as well: how Stripe makes money and what risks it carries? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The parties in a card payment and the role each plays - The sequence from checkout to money in the merchant's bank account, and why approval and money movement happen at different times - How a developer integrates Stripe, and how card data is kept away from the merchant's servers - What happens when things go wrong: declines, fraud, refunds, disputes and retried requests - Stripe's business model, and why a business would use it rather than set up payments directly with banks ### Follow-up Questions - A network timeout makes a store's server retry a payment request. How does the integration avoid charging the customer twice? - A customer disputes a charge with their bank. What happens next, and who bears the loss? - At what scale might a company add a second payment processor or negotiate directly with banks, and why?