Stripe Webhooks: The Right Way to Handle Money

Checkout is only the visible part of billing. The actual product state should follow Stripe events: payment succeeded, invoice failed, subscription updated, charge refunded.

Handle webhooks idempotently. Store processed event IDs, verify signatures, and make every handler safe to retry. Network retries and duplicate deliveries are normal, so design for them instead of treating them as edge cases.

The clean pattern is a small billing state machine in your app. Stripe tells you what changed, your system records it, and the product unlocks or restricts access from your own database.