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Stripe

Utility companies increasingly rely on digital payment solutions to streamline collections, reduce administrative work, and provide customers with a secure, convenient way to pay their bills online. To enable this, SkyBill integrates with Stripe, a leading global payment gateway.

On the one hand, you can add the Pay Now button to the tenant portal, emails, or invoices to allow tenants to make payments directly from these channels. On the other hand, for customers who prefer bank transfers, the VBAN option makes it easier to reconcile their payments with the open customer ledger entries in SkyBill.

Stripe acts as an intermediary between your customers and your bank, securely handling all payment processing. It collects payments from tenants or landlords and transfers them to your company's account. This approach ensures compliance with payment security standards while providing a seamless billing experience for your customers.

In this article, you'll find how SkyBill connects to Stripe, how to configure your Stripe account, and how to test and manage payments processed through the Stripe integration. To learn more about this concept, see Payment gateways – the basics.

Payment processing

When a tenant selects the Pay Now button in the portal, SkyBill redirects them to the payment gateway's secure payment page. There, the tenant enters their payment details and completes the transaction.

Technically, the Pay Now button is a call to the third-party payment processing company. SkyBill communicates with the payment gateway using API and webhooks. SkyBill contains the out-of-the-box integration with Stripe.

To test payment processing, turn on the Developer Mode toggle on the Developer FastTab of the Stripe Setup page. In this mode, you can use Stripe's sandbox keys. You should have a separate test environment (Business Central sandbox) to use this mode. Don't keep your Stripe live mode keys on the General FastTab in your test environment. Clean the live mode keys in the General FastTab when working in your test environment. To learn more, see Stripe API keys. When you use the sandbox keys, Stripe will not process real payments. When you process the payment on the portal, it will go through the test Stripe mode.

Stripe account setup

If you selected Stripe as the payment processor in the Payment Processor field on the Billing Setup page, you must configure your Stripe keys on the Stripe Setup page.

  1. Select Search (Alt+Q) Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. in the upper-right corner, enter Stripe Setup, and then choose the related link.
  2. Enter the Stripe keys on the General FastTab. You can find your live mode keys in your Stripe account.
  3. You can test the payment processing by turning the Development Mode toggle on the Developer FastTab. You should enter the sandbox keys on the Developer FastTab. When you turn this mode on, SkyBill will use Stripe's sandbox keys.
Warning

Never enter your live mode Stripe keys in development mode. Stripe provides separate keys for testing and production. Using the live mode keys in development mode may lead to unintended charges.

SkyBill company acting on your behalf

SkyBill company, as a software vendor, is Stripe's partner. For utility companies without a Stripe account, the SkyBill company can set one up on their behalf. SkyBill company has a connected account . In such cases, SkyBill company will send the email with the link, that the utility company must confirm to create the Stripe account. In the link, you confirm that you are SkyBill's partner and that you are using SkyBill's platform. To learn more, see Connect account types.

Pay Now button

You can include the Pay Now button in the invoice, email body, and the tenant portal. When your customer selects the button, SkyBill redirects the tenant to Stripe's payment page to complete the payment.

Virtual IBAN

You can add a Virtual IBAN (VBAN) to your invoice. A VBAN is a Stripe-generated IBAN that is unique to each tenant. When the tenant makes a payment using the VBAN, Stripe automatically associates the payment with the correct customer. The payment information is then sent to SkyBill and appears on the Stripe Transaction List page as an incoming transaction. As a next step, the batch job automatically posts the incoming transactions. In the event of errors, transactions will not be posted automatically and will require manual intervention. You need to regularly monitor the Stripe Transaction List page to ensure that all payments are processed correctly.

Invoicing with VBAN

Download a Visio file of this diagram.

Workflow

The following workflow corresponds to the previous diagram:

  1. VBAN is generated during the customer onboarding process. The information about the customer and the VBAN is exchanged between SkyBill and Stripe.
  2. After generating the invoice, SkyBill sends it to the customer with the VBAN included.
  3. The customer makes a payment which is processed by Stripe and received by SkyBill via the webhook.
  4. The information about the transaction contains the VBAN. This information allows SkyBill to associate the payment with the correct customer. Based on that, the Post Cash Receipts batch job runs and posts the incoming transactions automatically.

To learn more, see Virtual bank account numbers.

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