Payment Intent

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

A Payment Intent is Stripe's way of tracking a payment from 'I want to pay' to 'money received.' It's like a tracking number for a package, but for money. You create it when the customer starts checkout, it handles 3D Secure authentication, retries, and different payment methods, and it tells you exactly where the money is at every step.

Real Talk

PaymentIntent is Stripe's core API object for managing the lifecycle of a payment. It tracks the payment from creation through authentication (3D Secure), capture, and settlement. It supports multiple payment methods, automatic retries, and provides a single object to monitor payment state transitions.

When You'll Hear This

"Create the PaymentIntent on the server, confirm it on the client — never expose your secret key." / "The PaymentIntent tracks the entire payment lifecycle so we always know the exact status."