Ben Smith

Explore the critical importance of managing real-time inventory updates for both online marketplaces and physical stores. This blog post details the development of an event-driven architecture designed to synchronize inventory levels with Stripe payment events using AWS cloud services. The demonstration centers around the DevRel Swag Store, showcasing a practical application used at the GOTO Chicago event, which integrates serverless technologies like Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, and IoT Core for efficient inventory management. Learn about the challenges of using Stripe metadata for inventory, and discover robust solutions for handling race conditions and implementing dynamic inventory checks. Additionally, understand the trade-offs between using Stripe Payment Links and custom payment processes for real-time stock validation.

How do I store inventory data in my Stripe application

Is your Stripe integration ready to scale with your application? In this blog post, explore smart data strategies to enhance performance and security. Learn how to leverage Stripe/'s features, secure web backends, and serverless functions for efficient data management. Discover when to integrate a global CDN and use a separate database for deeper data control, ensuring a seamless user experience.

Data access patterns for simple Stripe integrations

Stripe Sandboxes offer a powerful solution for isolating testing environments, but how you implement them can make all the difference. Pick a sandbox strategy that best suits your organizations development approach and team size.

Choosing the right sandbox strategy for your organization

Secure your Stripe integrations by ditching unrestricted secret keys—learn how to protect merchant accounts with restricted access API keys and OAuth 2.0, and avoid compliance fees.

Upgrading your Stripe plugin security

Discover how to create independent testing environments with Stripe Sandboxes, streamline your development through GitHub automation, and prioritize the security of your API keys to enhance your payment integration process.

Avoiding test mode tangles with Stripe Sandboxes

This post demonstrates some more advanced patterns to help you build resilient and robust payment systems to integrate Stripe with your enterprise applications. As your integration grows in complexity and volume, these patterns become crucial for maintaining system stability and providing a smooth user experience.

Advanced error handling patterns for Stripe enterprise developers

With Workbench, developers now have a bird’s-eye view of their integration which shows many potential issues in one place. This makes it easier to see the impact of each incident, see how often it’s happening, and receive actionable advice for resolving the issue.

Simple error handling strategies with Stripe Workbench

This post shows how to use the Stripe Workbench Inspector to examine the lifecycle of a PaymentIntent object.

Bringing your Stripe objects to life with Workbench

Subscribe to Stripe Developers on YouTube.

Follow us at @Stripedev on twitter for updates and answers to your developer questions.

Sign up for the Developer Digest.

Join the Stripe Discord server to chat live with other developers.

Join Stripe Insiders to try the latest features and provide direct feedback to the teams that build them.

While Stripe offers powerful [pre-built solutions,](https://docs.stripe.com/no-code) many companies may wish to adapt their setup without disrupting existing integrations. By using Stripe’s [Event Destinations](https://docs.stripe.com/event-destinations) with cloud services, businesses can create tailored payment workflows that enhance functionality without modifying their core systems. 

One of the primary advantages of Stripe's offerings is that they reduce the time-to-market for businesses. With minimal setup, companies can start accepting payments, often within a matter of hours. While the base features are powerful, they may not cover every unique requirement a business might have. This is where customization comes into play. Stripe provides developers with the ability to extend its core functionalities through various [events](https://docs.stripe.com/api/events) and [APIs](https://docs.stripe.com/api). This flexibility allows businesses to adapt Stripe's capabilities to better match their specific workflows and customer experiences.

Event Destinations is now in GA and rolling out to all accounts. This blog post discusses the benefits of using Event Destinations with [Amazon EventBridge](https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/), and showcases practical use cases demonstrating how companies can achieve effective customizations.

## **Using Event Destinations and Amazon EventBridge**

Think of EventBridge as an optional target or event destination for Stripe webhooks. With event destinations you can send events to an [AWS account](https://aws.amazon.com/) using EventBridge, or deliver them to a [webhook endpoint](https://docs.stripe.com/webhooks). Incorporating Event Destinations and EventBridge into your payment processing architecture offers a host of advantages that make event handling easier and more efficient. Typically, receiving webhooks at a webhook endpoint often requires developers to manage server maintenance and scalability, and implement authentication with [header security checks](https://docs.stripe.com/webhooks?#verify-official-libraries). This can lead to complexity and additional overhead, particularly for teams more focused on product development than infrastructure management.

[Using EventBridge as an event destination](https://docs.stripe.com/event-destinations/eventbridge?locale=en-GB)  simplifies this process by allowing businesses to route events directly from Stripe to a variety of targets such as [AWS Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/), [AWS Step Functions](https://aws.amazon.com/step-functions/) or [Amazon SQS](https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/) without the need to manage server-side-code. This decoupling of event producers and consumers simplifies the development lifecycle, empowering developers to focus on the core functionality of their applications while avoiding the challenges of managing webhook HTTP endpoints.

With EventBridge, authentication and security become significantly simpler. All events are sent securely to EventBridge so merchants can trust each event is from Stripe without needing to verify webhook signatures in their code. EventBridge provides a secure way to route incoming events with built-in features like event filtering, logging, and transformation. Developers can define specific patterns for events that they wish to capture, ensuring that only the relevant data triggers downstream processes.

## **Near-limitless customization**

The integration of Event Destinations and EventBridge in your payment processing architecture, paired with Stripe’s APIs, opens the door to a world of almost limitless customizations. The true strength of AWS lies in its serverless capabilities, which allow businesses to run applications without the burden of managing and provisioning servers. This can transform how you process transactions, handle events, or interact with other services.

Using Lambda functions, developers can execute custom code in response to events triggered by Stripe. This provides an unparalleled level of flexibility and customization that goes beyond what traditional integrations can offer. Lambda automatically manages compute capacity, meaning that whether your events are few or many, performance remains consistent. This responsiveness is especially useful for businesses that experience variable traffic, as resources are allocated just in time on a pay-per-use basis to meet demand without the overhead of constant infrastructure management.

Additionally, with simple API calls, you can link Lambda with services like [Amazon DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/) for data storage, [Amazon S3](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) for object storage, or [Amazon SNS](https://aws.amazon.com/sns/) for messaging notifications. This allows you to build complex workflows and multi-step processes that can respond dynamically to events. 

## **Example customizations**

The many customization possibilities allow for a future-ready solution that can grow and adapt as your business does. Below, we explore use cases that illustrate how businesses have recently accomplished this.

### **Use Case 1: Offering a Free membership until a set date.**

Consider a scenario where a business wants to offer a free one season membership upon payment. The challenge lies in managing the member's subscription, particularly ensuring that the membership expires on a specified date. Here, Event Destinations publishes events to EventBridge which invokes a Lambda function that runs a snippet of custom code in response to [Stripe subscription events](https://docs.stripe.com/api/subscriptions).

This function calculates and updates the subscription’s end date in real time, ensuring users never have to think about renewing or canceling their membership at the end of the term. By managing this logic through serverless functions, the implementation occurs without the need to change the underlying integration with Stripe.

![](/images/growing-your-stripe-integration-with-event-destinations/1.png)

### **Use Case 2: Flexible Partial Payment Options for Students**

Educational institutions often require flexible payment solutions to accommodate student needs. In this example, a university implements a system that allows for partial payments by using a dedicated “Checkout” Lambda function. This Lambda function creates a subscription schedule after a student triggers a [PaymentIntent event](https://docs.stripe.com/api/payment_intents).

Following the creation of the subscription, a separate Lambda function generates invoice metadata copied from the subscription details. This enables a more flexible payment plan for students, allowing for adjustments and modifications without altering the core integration with Stripe. By employing Event Destinations and serverless functions in this manner, the university can provide a tailored experience that meets the diverse needs of its student population.  
![](/images/growing-your-stripe-integration-with-event-destinations/2.png)

### **Use case 3: Broadcast tipping event to multiple viewers in real-time**

In a live video streaming application, viewers can send donations or tips to broadcasters using Stripe for payment processing. The app developers want to broadcast every tip event to all connected viewers of a stream, without altering the existing integration. The flow involves listening for successful payment events and communicating these events in real time to all app viewers using [AWS IoT Core](https://aws.amazon.com/iot-core/) and [WebSockets](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/iot/latest/developerguide/protocols.html).  This approach enhances viewer engagement and provides an easy way for supporters to contribute financially during live broadcasts. 

A key advantage of this setup is scalability. As event-handling needs grow, EventBridge and IoT Core can accommodate increasing numbers of events without compromising performance. This elasticity is critical for businesses experiencing rapid growth or seasonal spikes in transaction volumes.

![](/images/growing-your-stripe-integration-with-event-destinations/3.png)

## Summary

Stripe’s core products provide a foundation for payment processing, but as your business grows, customizing these functionalities becomes essential. Stripe provides developers with the ability to extend its core functionalities through various events and APIs. By using Stripe’s Event Destinations, you can create a robust, event-driven architecture that enhances your existing integration without any disruptive changes.

Event Destinations enables you to capture and respond to key events within your payment processing lifecycle, while EventBridge facilitates orchestration of these events, allowing you to route them into AWS services. This combination allows developers to implement customizations and automations tailored specifically to their business goals. Routing Stripe events to AWS services like S3, SQS, and Lambda not only enhances your payment workflows but also ensures that your integration remains flexible and adaptable.

If Event Destinations has not rolled out to your account yet, you can enable it now in your Dashboard in the [Product preview settings](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/early_access). To learn more about Event Destinations, check out the videos on our [Stripe developers YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/stripedevelopers).

Event Destinations has begun rolling out to general availability as of 10/30 and will soon be enabled for all accounts. This post explores how to use Stripe Event Destinations and Amazon EventBridge to achieve near infinite customization possibilities for your payment solutions without disrupting your existing integrations.

Growing your Stripe integration With Event Destinations

Ben Smith