Global checkout in 10 minutes? It's easier than you think 

Last week I spent three hours debugging why our Stripe webhook signatures weren't validating in staging. It turned out to be a classic: a miniscule difference in how the JSON body was being stringified between my local environment and the Vercel Edge runtime. This is my life now. It's a recurring nightmare of subtle cryptographic and environment-specific bugs that has absolutely nothing to do with building features people actually pay for.

So when I head of Dodo Payments, I was skeptical. Another payments SDK, I groaned. But I had a project to integrate, so I blocked off my afternoon.

I finished it before my second coffee.

The whole thing boils down to a pattern that feels less like a traditional payment integration and more like implementing "Sign in with Google." And that's the point. It's basically OAuth for money.

The Dance: How it Works

If you've done any social auth, you already know this pattern:

1. Your Server -> Dodo: Your server calls its own endpoint to say, "Hey, I need a checkout link for this product."

2. Dodo -> User: Dodo gives you back a secure, one-time URL. You redirect the user to it.

3. User -> Dodo: The user fills out their payment info on a page hosted by Dodo. Your app never sees a credit card number, so PCI compliance is not your problem.

4. Dodo -> Your Webhook: Dodo pings your server to say, "Hey, that user paid. Or they didn't. Here's the result."

This model keeps the sensitive stuff off your servers and makes the integration shockingly simple.

1: Configure in the Dashboard

First, get your API keys from the Dodo dashboard. While you're there, create a "Product" and set your webhook URL (e.g., https://yourapp.com/api/webhooks). This is the "few clicks" part no code required.

2: Create a Checkout Endpoint

Add a single API route to your server. The Dodo adapter exposes a Checkout function that you initialize with your API key. This five-line file becomes a complete, secure endpoint that securely communicates with Dodo's API to generate a one-time checkout URL.