Payment link
A URL that opens a ready-made checkout for a set product or amount. Paste it in a message or a QR code and get paid without building anything.
See it
What it is
A payment link is a hosted checkout with the product and price baked into the URL. You make it in a dashboard in about a minute, then paste it into a DM, an invoice email, a bio link, or a printed QR code. Stripe Payment Links, PayPal.me, Square, and Razorpay all ship a version, and they can carry a one-off amount or a full subscription price.
Reach for one when the checkout is not worth building: validating an idea before there is an app, taking a deposit from a client, selling at a market stall, charging for a workshop seat. Most support promo codes, quantity limits, address collection, and a custom confirmation page, so they cover more than people expect.
Gotcha: a link is public and usually reusable. Anyone who has the URL can pay again, forward it, or screenshot it, so use single-use or quantity-capped links for anything scarce, and remember that changing the price means minting a new link because the old one keeps working at the old price. You also get thin funnel data and no upsell control, which is the moment to graduate to real checkout.
Ask AI for it
Create two Stripe Payment Links for me: a one-off 149 USD product with a quantity limit, and a 29 USD per month plan with a 7 day trial. Turn on promotion codes, collect billing address and phone, and send buyers to a custom confirmation page. Then show me the API code to mint one of these links per client on demand, store the URL against the client record, and render it as a downloadable QR code image for print.