How to Set Up Stripe (and Apple Pay / Google Pay) for CrowdCue Tips

CrowdCue's card tips run on Stripe — your own Stripe account, not a shared platform account — so the money lands directly with you, on your schedule, with no middleman holding your tips. Here's how to get an account set up and connected, plus how Apple Pay, Google Pay, and in-person tap-to-pay actually fit into the picture.

Part A: Creating your Stripe account

If you don't already have one, this takes most performers well under an hour to get through, though full verification can take up to a few business days if Stripe needs extra documentation.

1. Sign up at stripe.com. You'll create a login with your email and set a password — no payment info needed to start.
2. Tell Stripe what kind of account you are. Most solo performers sign up as an individual/sole proprietor, which lets you verify with your own personal ID and Social Security Number rather than formal business paperwork. If you've registered an LLC or corporation for your music business, you'll provide that entity's legal name and EIN instead.
3. Add your business/personal details. Legal name, address, date of birth, and the last 4 digits of your SSN (or full SSN/ITIN if requested) for individuals; legal entity name, EIN, and business address for registered businesses.
4. Verify your identity. Stripe may ask for a photo ID and a selfie/video verification step, especially for newer or higher-risk accounts. This is standard and usually takes a couple of minutes.
5. Add a bank account for payouts. This is where your tip money actually lands — routing and account number, same as setting up direct deposit anywhere else.
6. Wait for verification. Most straightforward individual accounts verify within minutes to 24 hours. If Stripe flags anything for extra review, it can take a few business days — check your email and the Stripe Dashboard for any requested follow-up documents.

Part B: Connecting Stripe to CrowdCue

CrowdCue doesn't process your tips directly or touch your Stripe account credentials — it uses Stripe Payment Links, which are hosted checkout pages you create inside your own Stripe Dashboard. You just paste the resulting links into your CrowdCue Settings tab.

1. Create your Payment Links in Stripe

1. Go to Stripe Dashboard → Payment Links and click "New."
2. Create three fixed-price links — $5, $10, and $20 — labeled something like "Tip Jar."
3. Create a fourth link using Stripe's "Customers choose what to pay" pricing option, so fans can enter any custom tip amount.
4. Copy each link's URL (they'll look like https://buy.stripe.com/...).

2. Paste the links into CrowdCue

In your CrowdCue dashboard, go to Settings → Stripe card tips and paste each URL into its matching field: $5 tip link, $10 tip link, $20 tip link, and the custom-amount tip link. Leave any field blank to hide that button from your audience page. Hit Save Tip Links — that's it, no code or webhook required for the buttons themselves to work.

3. Apple Pay & Google Pay — no extra setup needed

This is the part performers usually expect to be complicated, and it isn't: Stripe Payment Links automatically show Apple Pay or Google Pay as a one-tap option whenever a fan's phone and browser support it — no toggle inside CrowdCue, no extra integration. It's controlled entirely on Stripe's side, and it's on by default. If you ever want to double check or adjust which payment methods appear, that's in Stripe Dashboard → Settings → Payment methods — CrowdCue has no visibility into or control over that screen, since it's your Stripe account, not ours.

4. Optional: turn on real tip tracking

By default, Payment Link tips aren't tracked anywhere in your CrowdCue analytics — they just deposit straight into your Stripe balance. If you want tip totals to show up in your dashboard, there's a one-time webhook setup:

1. Go to Stripe Dashboard → Webhooks and add an endpoint.
2. Point it at the URL shown in your CrowdCue Settings tab — it'll look like https://crowdcue.io/api/v1/performers/your-slug/stripe-tip-webhook.
3. Set it to listen for the checkout.session.completed event.
4. Copy the signing secret Stripe gives you and paste it into the Webhook signing secret field in CrowdCue Settings, then save.

Once that's connected, you'll see a green "Tip tracking connected" confirmation in Settings, and verified tip totals will start showing up alongside your request stats.

What about physical tap-to-pay — holding a phone up to a card?

Worth being direct about this one: CrowdCue's tip buttons open a Stripe checkout page (with Apple Pay/Google Pay built in), which covers the vast majority of tipping. That's a different thing from true in-person "tap a physical card or phone against my phone" contactless payment, which Stripe offers as a separate product called Tap to Pay.

Tap to Pay isn't something you configure inside CrowdCue — it runs entirely through Stripe's own free "Tap to Pay & Stripe Payments" app, available on the App Store and Google Play. You sign into the same Stripe account you already set up, and your compatible iPhone or NFC-enabled Android phone becomes the reader — no extra hardware, no code. It's a handy complement for the occasional fan who wants to tap a physical card in person, used entirely separately from your CrowdCue tip links.