---
id: docs.start
title: "Choose how to get paid"
canonical: https://docs.secureprocessing.app/start
last_verified: 2026-11-01
---

# Choose how to get paid

A payment link, an invoice, or checkout on your own website. All three start in test mode, where no real money moves.

## Start in test mode

Every account starts in test mode, and everything works in it from the moment you sign up: payments, refunds, webhooks, invoices, the lot. Nothing in test mode moves real money, so you can try each way of getting paid before a customer sees it.

## No website: send a payment link

A [payment link](https://docs.secureprocessing.app/payment-links.md) is a page we host, at a URL you can print, message or turn into a QR code. You make it in the dashboard, with no code at all, and everyone who opens it can pay.

## Billing one customer: send an invoice

An [invoice](https://docs.secureprocessing.app/invoicing.md) is a bill with a number, a due date and a page where your customer pays by card. If it goes unpaid we email reminders on a schedule until it is paid, voided or written off.

## Your own website: use checkout

Your site creates a payment and sends your customer to a checkout page. This one needs a developer, and the [quickstart](https://docs.secureprocessing.app/quickstart.md) takes a test payment in about five minutes.

## Whichever you choose

Your customer enters their card on a page hosted by the bank, so card details never reach your servers or ours. Customers pay by Visa or Mastercard.

## When you are ready for real money

Live payments are refused until your account is activated. [Going live](https://docs.secureprocessing.app/activation.md) says what we ask for and what happens after you send it.

## Still stuck?

Write to [admin@secureprocessing.app](mailto:admin@secureprocessing.app).