How to Use UniLink Payments (Accept Stripe and PayPal on Your Page)

A complete guide to connecting Stripe and PayPal to your UniLink page, configuring payment settings, enabling tax collection, and avoiding the test mode mistake that silently breaks checkout for real customers.

Before any product block on your UniLink page can process a real transaction, you need to connect at least one payment processor. The Payments settings hub is where this connection lives, along with every setting that affects how checkout works across your entire page: which currencies you accept, when payouts hit your bank account, whether tax is calculated at checkout, and whether the platform fee is shown to buyers. Getting Payments configured correctly once means every block on your page — Shop, Digital, Course, Membership, Donation, Appointment — inherits those settings automatically. Getting one detail wrong, like leaving test mode on, means none of those blocks will process a real customer's money regardless of how perfectly everything else is built.

What UniLink Payments does

The Payments section in Settings is the configuration hub for payment processor connections and transaction-level settings. It is not a payment processor itself — UniLink does not hold your funds, process cards directly, or issue payouts. Instead, it connects to Stripe and PayPal via authorized integrations, and those providers handle actual payment processing, fraud detection, dispute management, and payouts. UniLink's role is to collect the payment intent from your customer at checkout and pass it to the connected processor, then receive confirmation of the completed payment and trigger the appropriate fulfillment (send the download link, grant course access, create the order record). This architecture means your payment processor choice — Stripe, PayPal, or both — determines what payment methods customers see at checkout, what currencies are available, and what payout timeline applies to your earnings.

Stripe and PayPal can both be connected simultaneously, and when both are active, the visitor sees both options at checkout and chooses which to use. This is a meaningful conversion driver: some customers strongly prefer PayPal (they trust it, have their account linked, or do not want to enter a card on an unfamiliar site) while others prefer Stripe's card checkout with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Offering both removes friction for each type of customer. There is no additional configuration required to make both work simultaneously once each is connected — UniLink routes the transaction to whichever processor the customer selected.

Platform fees apply to every transaction processed through UniLink. The fee percentage varies by plan: the free plan carries the highest fee, paid plans reduce it, and premium plans reduce it further or eliminate it entirely. Platform fees are charged on top of the payment processor's own fees (Stripe's standard rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card transaction for US-based accounts; PayPal's rates vary by account type and transaction type). You can choose to display the platform fee to buyers at checkout — this adds a line item to the checkout summary showing the fee — or absorb it into your price without showing it. The display setting is in Payments settings and applies globally to all your payment blocks.

Getting started

1. Create Stripe and/or PayPal accounts if you do not have them: UniLink connects to existing accounts — it does not create them. If you need a Stripe account, go to stripe.com and sign up (US residents can be approved and accepting payments within minutes; international account approval timelines vary by country). For PayPal, a personal account is sufficient for basic acceptance, but a PayPal Business account is recommended for business transactions and provides access to more detailed reporting. Have your bank account information ready for Stripe's payout setup.
2. Understand the fee structure for your plan: Before connecting, review your current UniLink plan's platform fee percentage in your account billing or plan comparison page. If you are on the free plan and expect meaningful transaction volume, calculate whether upgrading to a paid plan would save you more in reduced platform fees than the plan costs — at typical transaction volumes, this math favors upgrading earlier than most people expect.
3. Decide on test mode approach: Determine whether you want to test checkout before going live. If yes, connect Stripe and keep test mode on during your testing phase, then switch to live mode before sharing your page. Do not share your page URL with real customers while test mode is active — they will be unable to complete real payments even if the checkout interface appears fully functional.
4. Plan your currency and payout settings: If you sell to customers in multiple countries, decide which currency to price in. Stripe supports 135+ currencies and can automatically convert if needed. If your business is in a country with a currency other than USD, set your Stripe account's settlement currency to your local currency to avoid conversion fees on payouts.

How to set up Payments

1. Open the Payments settings: From your Dashboard, go to Settings → Payments. You will see connection panels for Stripe and PayPal, plus a settings section below for currency, payouts, fees, and tax.
2. Connect Stripe: Click Connect with Stripe. You will be redirected to Stripe's OAuth authorization page. Log in to your Stripe account (or create one if you do not have one). On the authorization page, Stripe will ask you to confirm that you are authorizing UniLink to create charges and receive webhooks on your behalf. Click Authorize. You will be redirected back to UniLink's Payments settings page, and the Stripe panel will show as connected with your Stripe account name and live mode status. The connection takes about 60 seconds total.
3. Verify live vs. test mode: After connecting Stripe, check the mode indicator in the Stripe panel. If it shows Test Mode, your Stripe account is in test mode and no real payments will be processed. To switch to live mode, click the toggle or follow the prompt to complete your Stripe account setup (Stripe requires identity verification and bank account information before enabling live payments). Do not proceed to the next steps until the panel shows Live Mode.
4. Connect PayPal (optional): Click Connect PayPal and enter the email address associated with your PayPal Business or personal account. UniLink sends a test transaction or verifies the account via PayPal's API. Once confirmed, the PayPal panel shows as connected. PayPal will appear as an additional checkout option alongside Stripe for all your payment blocks. If you later want to remove PayPal as an option, disconnect it from this same panel.
5. Configure accepted currency: In the currency settings below the processor connections, select the currency in which you want to display prices and accept payments. This setting affects how amounts are displayed on your product blocks and how Stripe processes the transaction. If you sell internationally but want to price in USD, leave this set to USD — Stripe will handle currency conversion for customers paying with non-USD cards. Changing currency after you have existing products will update the currency display on all your blocks, so verify that your prices are still set correctly after making this change.
6. Configure payout schedule (Stripe): In Stripe's settings (accessible from the Stripe Dashboard, not from UniLink directly), set your preferred payout schedule: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. The payout schedule determines how often Stripe transfers your earnings to your connected bank account, after Stripe's standard 2-day processing delay for card transactions. Daily payouts mean funds arrive faster but in smaller batches; monthly payouts consolidate your earnings into one transfer. UniLink does not control payout timing — this is a Stripe account-level setting.
7. Configure platform fee display: In the platform fee settings, choose whether to show the UniLink platform fee as a line item to buyers at checkout or to absorb it invisibly into the transaction. Showing the fee is more transparent and may prevent confusion from customers who see a slightly higher charge on their card statement than the price displayed. Absorbing it requires pricing your products to account for the fee so you receive the net amount you expect.
8. Enable Stripe Tax (optional): If you are registered to collect sales tax or VAT in any jurisdiction and want UniLink to calculate tax automatically at checkout, click Enable Stripe Tax and follow the setup prompts. Stripe Tax requires that you have already registered for sales tax collection in the relevant jurisdictions — enabling it before you are registered can create compliance obligations you are not prepared for. Only enable this if you have confirmed your tax registration requirements with an accountant or tax advisor.
9. Place a test order to verify setup: Toggle Test Mode on temporarily (or use a product block set to a small price). Visit your live page and complete a checkout using Stripe's test card number 4242 4242 4242 4242 (any future expiry, any CVC). Confirm the order appears in UniLink Orders and that the confirmation email was received. Then return to Settings → Payments and ensure you switch back to Live Mode before any real customers visit your page.

Key features and settings

How to get the most from Payments

The highest-leverage action in the Payments setup that most people skip is connecting both Stripe and PayPal. The typical reasoning for skipping PayPal is that "everyone has a credit card." This is wrong in two important ways. First, a meaningful percentage of customers — especially those over 45 and those shopping from outside the US — prefer PayPal because they have been using it for years and it requires no new trust in an unfamiliar checkout. Second, many customers specifically avoid entering their card number on link-in-bio pages they have not transacted with before, and PayPal gives them a trusted intermediary. The conversion lift from offering both options is real and measurable, and the setup takes two minutes. There is no operational downside — all transactions appear in the same Orders list regardless of payment method.

Payout timing is a business cash flow decision, not a technical one, but it is worth making deliberately rather than accepting the default. Stripe's daily payout setting means your earnings from two days ago hit your bank account every business day — which is useful if you are managing cash flow tightly or if you are reconciling weekly. Monthly payout consolidates everything into one transfer, which is cleaner for accounting but means you might wait 30+ days for your first payout after going live. Choose the schedule that matches your cash flow needs and accounting workflow. This is set in your Stripe Dashboard directly, not in UniLink, so make sure to configure it there after completing the UniLink connection.

Plan-level platform fees compound at meaningful transaction volumes. The math is simple: a 2% platform fee difference between the free plan and a paid plan means a paid plan pays for itself completely at $X per month in sales, where X equals the plan cost divided by 0.02. For most creators who have any traction with product sales, the fee reduction on a paid plan is the best return per dollar of any upgrade they can make. Run the numbers against your actual transaction volume before assuming the free plan is cheaper — the platform fee math usually proves otherwise once you are processing even modest sales consistently.

Stripe Tax is genuinely useful if you are required to collect sales tax or VAT, but it is a tool that requires tax knowledge to configure correctly — it is not a substitute for understanding your tax obligations. The key principle: you are responsible for determining which jurisdictions require you to collect tax and registering there before you start collecting. Stripe Tax's job is to calculate the rate and add it to the checkout once you tell it which jurisdictions apply. Turning it on without understanding your nexus or VAT registration status can result in collecting tax in jurisdictions where you are not registered to remit it, which creates compliance risk. Consult a tax advisor before enabling Stripe Tax if you are unsure of your obligations.

Troubleshooting common issues

Frequently asked questions