Sell digital products with Stripe Payment Links: the complete guide

Stripe Payment Links are the fastest way to charge money on the internet: no code, no server, a URL you can put anywhere. This guide covers actually selling digital products with them, including the part Stripe doesn't do for you: delivery. Useful whether or not you use our tool; we mark the one section where we're selling you something.

1. Create the product and price (2 minutes)

Dashboard → Products → Add product. One-time price, your currency. For digital goods sold internationally, most indie sellers price in USD. Buyers everywhere are used to it and Stripe converts.

2. Create the Payment Link

Create a Payment Link from that price. Three settings that matter for digital goods:

Collect a delivery handle. Add a custom field: for products delivered through GitHub, the buyer's GitHub username; for other goods, whatever identifies where the product goes. Without this you'll fulfill by replying to receipt emails forever.
Confirmation message. After payment, the buyer sees a hosted message. Say exactly what happens next and how long it takes ("your repo invite usually arrives within minutes, always within a few hours"), and how to reach you if it doesn't. Vague messages create support tickets and disputes.
Promotion codes toggle if you ever want launch coupons.

3. Deliver the digital product (the hard part)

A completed Payment Link checkout gives you money and a checkout.session object. It does not give the buyer anything. Your options, in increasing order of infrastructure:

Manual. Stripe emails you per sale; you email the goods. Fine for the first sales, doesn't survive a launch spike or a weekend away.
Secret download URL in the confirmation message. Instant and zero infra, but one buyer can share the link and there's no per-buyer control.
Webhook + server + mailer. The classic: checkout.session.completed fires, your endpoint generates a license or link and emails it. Fully flexible; you now operate TLS, retries, a mail sender, and an inbox for bounce handling.
Polling from CI (the part where we sell you something: this is what our free, MIT-licensed HonorBox does). A scheduled GitHub Action lists recent checkout sessions, reads the buyer's GitHub username from the custom field, and invites them to a private repo with the goods. Access-controlled per buyer, revocable on refund, no server, no webhook endpoint, no mailer. The cost: delivery takes a few minutes, and buyers need GitHub accounts. See it running on this store; our own checkout is this exact pipeline.

Option 4 in depth: Deliver digital products through GitHub.

4. Receipts, refunds, disputes

Turn on receipt emails (Settings → Emails → successful payments).
Decide your refund policy before launch and write it down where buyers can find it. For $10-50 digital goods, "30 days, no questions" costs you almost nothing and prevents disputes. A single chargeback typically costs a $15 fee plus the payment, more than several refunds put together.
Refund fast. A refund request answered in an hour rarely becomes a dispute.

5. Tax on digital products, in one paragraph

With Payment Links you are the merchant of record: VAT/sales tax on digital goods is your responsibility, unlike on Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy where the platform is the seller. Practically: most small sellers start below registration thresholds; enable Stripe Tax's free threshold monitoring on day one, and read the rules for your own country once. Our plain-language tax explainer goes one level deeper without the hand-waving. Not tax advice.

6. The launch checklist

Product + one-time price created
Payment Link with a delivery-handle custom field
Confirmation message states delivery method and latency
Delivery automated (any of options 2-4)
Receipt emails on, refund policy written
Stripe Tax threshold monitoring on