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Stripe Billing Integration

This is the technical reference for Piano's Stripe Billing integration: the complete, detailed source for configuration, features, and system behavior, split into focused sections. If you want step-by-step, audience-specific instructions instead, use the Client Guide Series (linked in full at the bottom of this page).

Piano's Stripe Billing integration keeps Piano as your primary interface for subscription management while Stripe's billing engine handles payment processing, invoicing, and AI-driven revenue recovery. The documentation is organized in two tiers:

  • Tier 1, the Technical Reference (this hub and its section pages below): the full detail, organized by topic.

  • Tier 2, the Client Guide Series: a shorter, task-oriented walkthrough in three parts, with Setup and Manage split by client type (Stripe Payments vs BYOP).

What Piano does and what Stripe does

Piano Subscriptions (Management + Billing) owns your terms and offers, pricing and proration, promotions and vouchers, tax calculation, access control and grace periods, Checkout and My Account, subscriber emails through Email Manager, the Publisher Dashboard and API, upgrade and downgrade logic, Subscription Insights reporting, and the connection to your payment processor when you use BYOP.

Stripe Billing owns the subscription schedule, invoice generation and finalization, the renewal clock, and payment retries through Smart Retries when the payment method is Stripe-native.

Stripe Payments, if you use it, owns the card charge, PCI scope for card data, and Stripe's financial reporting.

What changes for you: Piano is still where you manage subscriptions. Renewals are now driven by Stripe's billing clock rather than Piano's. If you use Stripe Payments, retry configuration moves out of Passive Churn Prevention in Piano and into Revenue Recovery in Stripe, and Passive Churn Prevention settings no longer affect those subscriptions.

What does not change: everything you configure in Piano stays in Piano. Terms, offers, promotions, emails, and access rules are unaffected.

Tier 1: Technical Reference sections

Getting started

Features and capabilities

  • Feature Overview: which Piano features are supported when Stripe Billing manages new purchases, including resources, payment terms, dynamic terms, tax support, and checkout.

  • Dynamic Terms: multi-phase billing structures, how they map to Stripe subscription schedules, and the 3-year billing guideline.

  • Subscription Operations: auto-renew, cancellation, refunds, changing the next billing date, manual renewal, and payment-method management.

  • Non-Stripe Providers (BYOP): bring-your-own-processor architecture, renewal flow, and differences from Stripe-native.

  • Subscription Upgrades: the subscription-first upgrade model and supported scenarios.

  • Upgrade Types and Timing: immediate vs deferred upgrades, proration, and lifecycle operations.

  • Subscription Billing & Revenue Recovery: Smart Retries, the Passive Churn Prevention comparison, and invoice settings.

Billing operations and integration

Reference and support

  • Support SLAs: SLAs and problem-ticket severity levels.

  • FAQ: frequently asked questions about the integration.

Tier 2: Client Guide Series (step-by-step)

The Client Guide Series index is the shorter, task-oriented walkthrough. Part 1 applies to everyone; Parts 2 and 3 come in a Stripe Payments and a BYOP version. Follow the one matching how you process payments. Part 1 also covers the supported Stripe payment methods and markets.

Part

Stripe Payments

BYOP

Part 1: Overview (all clients)

Part 1: Stripe Billing Integration Overview

Part 2: Set Up and Configure

Part 2 — Stripe Payments

Part 2 — BYOP

Part 3: Manage Subscriptions

Part 3 — Stripe Payments

Part 3 — BYOP

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