# One Stripe key, and everything that pays you through it

URL: https://www.orla.finance/en/stripe
Markdown twin of that page. Append `.md` to any Orla page URL to get one.

Substack, Ghost, Memberful, Ko-fi, your own checkout: if the money lands in your Stripe, it lands here, with the fees split out.

A restricted key you mint yourself, read only on balance and balance transactions.

#### Most creator tools ask you to connect six platforms. Stripe already is the six

Subscriptions, memberships and tips have no money system. They have Stripe.

- Everything money-shaped in Stripe passes through one place, the balance transactions, so one read-only key sees all of it.
- Charges roll up into a day: gross in one figure, Stripe's fees in another, so your real income is not the number on the invoice.
- Refunds subtract from the day they belong to rather than appearing as a mystery expense later.
- Payouts come across one by one, so the transfer to your bank is a transfer, not more income.

#### A restricted key, with two permissions on it

You create it in your own Stripe dashboard and choose what it may read.

- What to create: In your Stripe dashboard, a restricted key (rk_live_) with read access on Balance and Balance transactions; nothing else is needed or used.
- What it cannot do: By construction, not by promise: a read key cannot charge a card, issue a refund or move a payout. Stripe enforces that, not us.
- Checked before it is saved: Tried against Stripe first, so a wrong key never reaches the database.
- Where it lives: Encrypted at rest once it is accepted, and never returned by our API again.
- Your Orla billing: A different Stripe entirely: this is your Stripe as an earnings source, and it has nothing to do with how you pay for Orla.

#### What has not reached your bank yet is an account, not a rounding error

What Stripe still holds becomes an account, counted once and in the right place.

- Earned but not paid out is money you have, and it shows as money you have.
- When the payout lands, it moves between two accounts you own instead of arriving from nowhere.
- One account per currency, so a euro balance and a dollar balance stay themselves.

Platforms connect on the paid plans; the free plan keeps the book.