A range of HCB's features are built using Stripe; including donations, invoices and issued cards. Fortunately, Stripe has amazing developer tools which allow you to use it in development very easily.
We recommend creating a US Stripe account in "test mode". Read more here: docs.stripe.com/test-mode. Once you create a Stripe account, you'll be in the default sandbox.
Now that you have a Stripe account, go to the Developers menu in the bottom-left corner and click on API keys. You'll need a publishable key and a secret key - create and copy both of these into the .env.development file, with the names STRIPE__TEST__PUBLISHABLE_KEY and STRIPE__TEST__SECRET_KEY, respectively. Remember that if you're using the devcontainer (such as with GitHub Codespaces), you must rebuild the container after modifying the .env.development file to pull in the new variables.
The last thing you'll need to do whenever you're testing with Stripe is configure webhooks. Every time an action happens on Stripe, like a card charge, a webhook is sent to HCB. Since your development instance of HCB isn't publicly available, you'll need to run the local listener. Install the Stripe CLI and start the listener with:
stripe listen --forward-to localhost:3000/stripe/webhook
We use Stripe Issuing to issue virtual and physical credit cards to users. It requires a little more setup to get started. Head over to the Issuing tab on the Stripe dashboard (it's hidden under "More" in the sidebar), and enable it. You'll then need to add funds to your Issuing Balance, which you can do in the Balances tab. Click on "Add to balance" in the Issuing balance section, and add up to $2,500. It's all fake money in test mode!
Once you've started the transfer, it may take some time for the money to actually be available to spend on issued cards.
Once you're setup, you can use most of HCB's Stripe features like normal! Read more for details on specific features.
For donating money in development, use card number 4242 4242 4242 4242, with any 3 digits for the CVC and any future date as the expiration date. You can also browse other test cards if you'd like to simulate a different card brand or country. As long as your local webhook listener is running, the donation should immediately appear in HCB after you submit.
Stripe also lets you simulate charges on an issued card! First, issue a virtual card from HCB. Then, go into the Stripe dashboard, and go to the Cards tab in Stripe Issuing. There, you should be able to see all the cards you've issued. Click on the card you'd like to charge, and then click on "Create test purchase" in the three-dots menu that appears.
From here, you can fill out any data you wish - most is optional. If you'd like to simulate a charge from a specific merchant, check out the yellow_pages merchants file - this contains network IDs for a ton of common merchants.
For more information on how card transactions work, see the card transactions guide.