Which cards can start a free trial

The free 7-day trial checks your card and charges nothing until day 7. These rules apply to it:

• One free trial per card. A card that has already started a free trial, on any account, cannot start another.
• Prepaid cards cannot start a free trial. Credit and debit cards can.
• Outside the US, a free trial needs a quick ID check. If you sign up from outside the US, your account is outside the US, or your card was issued outside the US, Stripe asks for a photo of a government ID and a selfie. It takes about two minutes.
• One free trial per ID. An ID that has already started a free trial on another account cannot start another.

The ID check

When your connection or account is outside the US, the check comes before you enter a card. When only the card is from outside the US, you are asked after checkout, and nothing is charged until you have verified. Stripe holds the photos; we keep the result, the issuing country of the document and a one-way fingerprint of its number. You only verify once per account.

If Stripe cannot verify a try, for example because a photo is blurry, you can try again. Once verified, Continue to checkout puts your servers back in your cart as a free trial.

If your trial is refused

Nothing is charged and no server is built. The page you land on after checkout says which rule applied (if you closed the page first, we email you). It has a button to verify your ID when that is what is missing, and a button to check out with Pay today: your servers go back in your cart and billing starts that day.

Pay today has none of these rules and needs no ID check. If you think a refusal is wrong, contact support: they can let your next trial checkout through.