Payment gateways

Three cards, one per gateway, at Monetization ▸ Settings ▸ Payment Gateways.

Each one is off until you switch it on, and folds its fields away while it is off, so the screen stays short.

The coloured line at the top of each card is its status, worked out from what you have actually saved rather than from the switch. It will tell you “keys set”, or that a key is missing, before you find out from a reader.

You do not need all three. Most sites run Stripe, or Ko-fi, or both.

Stripe

Credit cards. The usual first choice.

Test Mode decides which pair of keys is used. Leave it on while you are setting up. There are four key fields, not two, so your live keys can already be in place while you are still testing.

Copy from your Stripe dashboard:

1. Publishable key and Secret key, from Developers, API keys. Take the test pair first.
2. Add a webhook endpoint pointing at the Webhook URL shown at the bottom of this card, then copy the Signing secret Stripe gives you into the field above it.

The webhook is how Stripe tells your site a payment succeeded. Without it the reader pays and no coins arrive: the money moves, the balance does not. This is the single most common way a gateway ends up half-working, which is why the webhook URL is printed on the screen ready to copy.

Secret fields always render blank, even when a value is saved, so nobody can read a key off your screen. The line underneath says whether one is stored. Leaving a secret field blank keeps what is there; typing in it replaces it.

Proving it works

With Test Mode on, buy your cheapest package from your own wallet page using the card number 4242 4242 4242 4242, any future expiry, any CVC. The wallet shows that card number on screen while test mode is on, so you do not have to go and look it up.

Coins should appear in your balance within a second or two. If they do not, the webhook is wrong.

PayPal

PayPal Smart Buttons. Same shape as Stripe: a Sandbox Mode switch, a sandbox pair and a live pair of Client ID and Secret, a Webhook ID, and the webhook URL to register.

Credentials come from the PayPal Developer dashboard, not from your ordinary PayPal account settings.

Ko-fi

Ko-fi is different from the other two: it is a shop you already run, and JormunTL listens to it rather than charging anybody itself.

Ko-fi Username is the name in your Ko-fi address, ko-fi.com/thisbit.

Verification Token and the webhook URL both come from Ko-fi’s own webhook settings page. The token is how your site knows a message really came from Ko-fi and not from somebody who guessed the URL.

Because Ko-fi payments arrive from Ko-fi rather than from a signed-in reader, some of them cannot be matched to an account: a supporter who paid with a different email, or who has no account on your site at all. Those land on the Ko-fi donations waiting for an account list at the bottom of the Monetization settings screen, where you can attach each one to a reader by hand. Nothing is lost; it just waits.

Going live

1. Enter the live keys.
2. Turn Test Mode or Sandbox Mode off.
3. Buy the smallest package once with a real card.
4. Refund it in the gateway’s own dashboard.

Step 4 is where refunds happen for everything, not only for this test. JormunTL has no refund button on purpose, because the money is not in JormunTL.