Very similar to Cloudinary, our first step before getting started is to set up our Stripe account:

1. You can create a test account for free by visiting https://stripe.com/ and clicking on CREATE ACCOUNT:

2. After you have signed up and verified your email address, you will have access to the Stripe management dashboard. You can find the API credentials we will need to integrate with Express in the API section of the sidebar, in fields labeled Publishable key and Secret Key:

3. You will want to toggle the View Test Data switch on to make sure that we are working with test credentials instead of full production keys. Otherwise, you may accidentally pay with real money and incur a Stripe processing fee.
4. We will also want to install the Stripe NPM module for working with the Stripe API, similar to how we integrated with the Cloudinary API:

npm install stripe --save

With our Stripe test API keys acquired and our Stripe module installed, we are ready to begin setting up our payment processor integration.