Connect your Stripe account

litecommerce processes payments through your own Stripe account, not ours. Money from your sales goes directly to you, and you are the merchant of record — you own your payouts, refunds, disputes, and tax. You connect once, from the admin.

Connect in a few clicks

1. Go to Settings → Checkout (or the Payments step in your onboarding checklist).
2. Click Connect Stripe account.
3. You'll be sent to Stripe to sign in (or create an account) and authorize the connection. Stripe collects your business and bank details — this is Stripe's standard onboarding, and litecommerce never sees your bank credentials.
4. When you finish, Stripe returns you to litecommerce and your payment status updates automatically.

Only Owners and Admins can connect or change the payment account.

Payment status

After connecting, your admin shows one of:

You can only take real payments once your status is Verified. Until then, live checkout stays closed — this protects you and your customers from a half-finished setup. If you're Restricted, open your Stripe dashboard, complete whatever Stripe is asking for, then click Refresh in litecommerce.

What you own as merchant of record

Because the money flows through your Stripe account:

• Payouts go from Stripe to your bank on your schedule.
• Refunds you issue in litecommerce settle from your account.
• Disputes and chargebacks are handled in your Stripe dashboard.
• Tax uses your connected account’s settings and registrations when Stripe Tax is selected and available. You remain responsible for registration, collection, filing, and remittance.

Configure taxes for checkout

In Settings → Checkout, Tax mode → Stripe Tax is your store’s policy choice. Stripe Tax is the form default when no tax mode has been saved. Saving Checkout settings for any reason also saves the displayed tax mode, even if you only changed an unrelated setting. The setup panel distinguishes the saved policy from an unsaved Stripe Tax choice. Saving does not configure Stripe or enable the platform’s tax service. Verified payment status alone does not mean tax is ready.

1. Open Stripe Tax settings and select the Stripe account connected to this store. If you manage several businesses, confirm the selected business before editing.
2. For real orders, select that account’s live mode. A successful test or sandbox setup does not configure live tax. For test orders, select the exact test environment/sandbox connected to your test store; a different sandbox or the live account’s default Test mode is not interchangeable.
3. Review and confirm your head office address. For physical goods, check the address you ship from. Choose the appropriate preset product tax classification and review the preset shipping tax classification for shipping charges. Ordinary litecommerce checkout adds tax on top of its prices; changing a Stripe price default does not make those prices inclusive.
4. Open Tax registrations / Locations. Determine where you have an obligation to collect tax, complete any required registration with the relevant authority, then record the applicable registrations and effective dates in Stripe. Do not add a live registration merely to make a readiness indicator green.
5. Complete the outstanding Stripe Tax setup until Stripe reports active Tax settings. Return to Settings → Checkout, save Stripe Tax if needed, and click Refresh tax readiness.
6. Verify checkout in the corresponding environment with representative products, shipping charges, and customer destinations. Review the tax amount before payment. For a completed order, verify the order/receipt and the Tax transaction in the same connected Stripe account. Use test payments for sandbox verification; a live checkout is a real transaction.

One preset across the catalog: ordinary checkout currently uses the connected account’s preset product tax code for all merchandise. litecommerce has no per-product tax-code management, and editing individual Stripe Products does not assign tax codes to litecommerce catalog items. If your catalog needs multiple classifications, discuss suitability with your tax adviser and litecommerce support before relying on this setup.

Ready is a point-in-time setup check. It does not count registrations or promise a positive tax amount. A calculation can legitimately return zero, including for a destination where you are not registered or an exempt sale. You and your tax adviser remain responsible for nexus, classifications, registrations, collection, filing, and remittance; litecommerce does not choose these for you. See Stripe’s connected-account setup guide, Tax setup guide, and sandbox testing guide.

Manual / no tax calculated remains a separate, deliberate choice. It requires accepting responsibility in Admin, records that acknowledgement, and preserves the disclosure that litecommerce did not calculate tax on checkout and receipt views. Do not use it as an automatic workaround for an unavailable tax service. These setup instructions do not declare the broader tax feature generally released.

Test before taking live payments

Use your staging or test environment to place test orders without real cards. In production, connected-account payments are available only while the account status is Verified; checkout fails closed if Stripe later restricts or disconnects the account.

Troubleshooting

• "Connect Stripe account" is unavailable — confirm you are an Owner or Admin and that payment onboarding is enabled for the current environment; contact support if the control remains unavailable.
• Stuck on Connected or Restricted — Stripe still needs details. Finish in your Stripe dashboard, then click Refresh.
• Status didn't update after finishing on Stripe — click Refresh; it re-checks Stripe right away.