Connecting Stripe

Stripe gives Scout the revenue side of your funnel: payments, subscriptions, checkouts, refunds, and disputes. Together with web tracking it shows which visitors actually became paying customers.

What it unlocks

Counts of successful and failed payments, checkout sessions and checkout failures, refunds, and disputes.
Subscription lifecycle: new, updated, paused, resumed, and canceled subscriptions, trials ending, and active subscribers.
Privacy-safe snapshots of customers, subscriptions, products, prices, and invoices for pricing and commerce analysis.
Optional recurring revenue KPIs (MRR, ARR, invoice revenue) and optional exact per-transaction amounts, both off by default.

By default TractionScout stores counts, allowlisted resource state, project-scoped pseudonyms, and coarse value tiers. It does not store names, email addresses, payment methods, addresses, or raw metadata.

What access is requested

Stripe uses an API key, not OAuth. Create a restricted key in the Stripe Dashboard with read access to the resources TractionScout reads: events, customers, subscriptions, invoices, refunds, disputes, products, prices, and your account details. No write permission is needed; Scout never charges, refunds, or edits anything in Stripe.

Optionally create a webhook endpoint in Stripe and store its signing secret (whsec_...) so TractionScout can accept signed events between syncs.

Prerequisites

Access to the Stripe account you want to analyze, with permission to create restricted keys and webhook endpoints.
Permission to manage credentials in the TractionScout project.

Stripe is a non-OAuth source and is available during the alpha.

Steps

In the Stripe Dashboard create a restricted API key with read access to the resources listed above and copy it.
In TractionScout open Configure → Data Sources, choose Stripe, and select the Restricted key connect option.
Paste the key into Restricted key. It is stored by reference and is never shown again.
Review the collection switches. Payment, subscription, checkout, value tier, resource snapshot, customer snapshot, and product catalog collection are on by default; Collect MRR, ARR, and revenue KPIs and Collect exact payment, refund, and dispute amounts are separate opt-ins. Set the revenue currency if you enable them.
Save the connection and run the first sync.
Optional: in Stripe create a webhook endpoint pointing at /api/v4/tractionscout/projects/{project_id}/integrations/{integration_id}/stripe/events on your TractionScout host, using the project and integration IDs of this connection, then paste the endpoint's signing secret into Webhook signing secret.

After the first sync

The first sync backfills events and resource snapshots through the Stripe API and reports how many metric snapshots were written. Later syncs run on the configured interval (default 60 minutes) and resume from the last cursor. Signed webhook events arrive between syncs when you configured the endpoint.

Scout can then relate payment and subscription activity to the same period as your web traffic and experiments, and flag failed payments, rising refunds, or open disputes.

Common questions

Can I use a standard secret key? Use a restricted read-only key. A full secret key grants far more than TractionScout needs.

Will exact revenue appear? Only if you enable the revenue KPI or exact amount opt-ins. Otherwise you see counts and coarse tiers. Unsupported discounts, tax-inclusive prices, trial offers, or usage pricing make the revenue KPIs report as unavailable rather than guessing.

Does test mode work? Use a key from the mode whose data you want to analyze; a test-mode key returns test data.

The connection shows "Needs attention". The last sync step failed, for example because the key was revoked or lost a permission. Read the error shown on the connection, fix the key in Stripe, and sync again.

Disconnecting

Open the connection in Data Sources and select Remove connection. The stored key and signing secret are deleted with the integration and syncs stop; imported evidence stays in the project. Also delete the restricted key and the webhook endpoint in the Stripe Dashboard so nothing can use them.