Receipt or invoice: what Stripe sends
Stripe makes a receipt for every successful payment: "Stripe creates receipts for all successful payments and refunds, including invoice payments and recurring payments as part of a subscription" (Stripe docs, read 18 October 2026). Whether your buyer gets it by email is your setting: "You can automatically send customer receipts by email" (Stripe docs, read 23 October 2026), under Settings, Business, Customer emails. Without it, the receipt still exists online, and you can send it by hand.
An invoice is opt-in for one-off sales: "For subscriptions, Stripe generates invoices automatically, but you need to enable them for one-time payments." The setting is invoice_creation[enabled] on the Checkout Session.
A receipt proves a payment. It does not carry your buyer's company, address and VAT ID the way their accountant expects, and that is where the invoice emails start.
What a Stripe invoice costs
Turning on invoices for one-time payments is not free: "The pricing for this feature is 0.4% of the transaction total, up to a maximum of $2 USD (or local currency equivalent) per invoice" (Stripe Support, read 18 October 2026). On a $29 sale that is 12 cents. The full arithmetic, and Stripe Invoicing's own fees, are on the Stripe invoice fee page.
The VAT ID problem
In Stripe Checkout, the buyer gives a business tax ID before the payment, inside the checkout. Once a customer has a saved tax ID, "Checkout doesn’t display the tax ID collection form even if tax ID collection is enabled" (Stripe docs, read 18 October 2026).
If you use Stripe's customer portal, your customers can "Update billing information, including their tax IDs" there (Stripe docs, read 23 October 2026). That changes the customer's details for what comes next; Stripe's docs say that "finalized invoices can’t be edited" (Stripe docs). A buyer who needs a different company name or VAT ID on an invoice already issued has to ask you.
And Stripe does not make e-invoice files: Stripe Invoicing "doesn't generate or transmit legally compliant e-invoice files on its own" (Stripe docs, read 18 October 2026).
How InvoiceCow invoices every Stripe payment
- Connect Stripe with a restricted key and a webhook. Past payments can come in too.
- Every successful payment becomes an invoice in your company's name, with the next number of your company's own sequence. A refund becomes a credit note.
- Your buyers help themselves. Put your InvoiceCow link on the receipt. Buyers add their company name, address and VAT ID, after they pay, and download the invoice. EU VAT IDs are checked against VIES.
InvoiceCow charges nothing per invoice. Stripe's payment fees stay as they are: InvoiceCow never touches the payment. The invoices come as PDFs today; the e-invoice files (Factur-X, ZUGFeRD, XRechnung, UBL, CII, Peppol BIS) are planned, with the status shown above.
If you already use Stripe Invoicing or Stripe Billing, keep it: its invoice stays the invoice, and InvoiceCow adds the buyer page around it.
Not your invoice to send: Stripe Managed Payments
With Stripe Managed Payments, Stripe (through Link) is the merchant of record and sends the invoice itself. See Stripe Managed Payments and merchant of record.
InvoiceCow is not affiliated with Stripe. Stripe is a trademark of its owner.