Stripe Webhooks vs. AWS EventBridge Partner Event Bus: Which One Should You Use for Payment Processing?

• 1. How Stripe Communicates Events
• 2. Stripe Webhooks: The Default, Proven Method
• 3. EventBridge Partner Event Bus: Stripe → AWS Directly
• 4. The Hybrid “Best of Both Worlds” Pattern
• 5. Which One Should YOU Use?
• 6. Conclusion

Stripe makes payment processing easy. AWS makes event-driven architecture scalable. But when you combine both ecosystems, a common architectural question appears:

Should you consume payments through Stripe Webhooks or Stripe’s native integration with AWS EventBridge (Partner Event Bus)?

Both solutions work. Both deliver the same Stripe events. But they come with very different operational models, trade-offs, and long-term implications.

In this article, we’ll go deep into the engineering considerations behind each approach and help you decide which one truly fits your system.

1. How Stripe Communicates Events

Stripe emits events for almost everything:

• payment_intent.succeeded

• checkout.session.completed

• invoice.payment_failed

• customer.subscription.deleted

• and dozens more.

You need to receive these events reliably, verify their authenticity, then trigger your internal business logic (update DB, activate subscription, send emails, create invoices, etc.).

Stripe offers two delivery mechanisms:

1. HTTP Webhooks (traditional)

2. AWS EventBridge Partner Event Bus (modern SaaS→AWS integration)

Both receive the same Stripe events, but fundamentally change how your backend handles them.

2. Stripe Webhooks: The Default, Proven Method

A Stripe webhook is just an HTTP POST from Stripe to your endpoint:

Stripe → https://api.myapp.com/stripe/webhook

Your backend receives the event, verifies the signature, and processes it.

Why Webhooks Are the Default Choice

✔ Low latency

No intermediate hops. Stripe → Lambda/API directly.

✔ Maximum flexibility

You can:

• verify the webhook signature,

• implement custom idempotency,

• validate request payloads,

• run your own logging and auditing.

✔ Works on ANY infrastructure

API Gateway, Lambda URL, Express server, Docker on ECS, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, Vercel, Netlify — it doesn’t matter.

✔ Simple mental model

It’s “a POST request”. Every developer understands it.

Limitations of Webhooks

Webhooks start to break down as your system grows:

❌ Tight coupling

Your webhook Lambda becomes a massive function:

• billing logic

• subscription logic

• retries

• notifications

• analytics

• CRM triggers

All from one incoming request.

❌ Difficult fan-out

• If four services need the events, most teams end up doing something messy:

• calling multiple internal services,

• pushing events to queues themselves,

• writing a mini router in Lambda.

❌ Not great for large teams

Everyone wants to “add one more thing” to the webhook handler → becomes a monolith.

3. EventBridge Partner Event Bus: Stripe → AWS Directly

This is AWS’s SaaS-to-cloud integration model.

Stripe publishes events directly into your AWS account using EventBridge Partner Event Source.

Stripe → AWS EventBridge Partner Bus
              ├── Rule 1 → Lambda: update DB
              ├── Rule 2 → SQS: analytics ingestion
              ├── Rule 3 → SNS: marketing automation
              └── Rule 4 → Step Functions: financial workflow

Why Teams Choose the Partner Event Bus

✔ Perfect for fan-out

• Each service can listen to exactly the events it cares about:

• Billing service → only invoice.*

• Analytics → everything

• Subscription service → only checkout.session.completed

• No central bottleneck.

✔ Built-in filtering

EventBridge rules can match:

• event type,

• JSON fields,

• even nested fields.

Example:

Route only payments above $100 to the fraud detection pipeline.

• No custom code.

✔ Cross-account or multi-team systems

You can forward Stripe events to:

• dev, staging, prod accounts,

• microservices owned by different teams,

• central observability accounts.

✔ Resilient delivery, retries, DLQs

EventBridge provides:

• durable delivery,

• automatic retries,

• fallback DLQs.

This makes Stripe events nearly impossible to lose.

✔ Cleaner architecture

You stop mixing “Stripe-specific plumbing code” with “business logic”.

But EventBridge Has Trade-Offs

It’s not a magic bullet.

❌ Vendor lock-in

Your Stripe → EventBridge integration is AWS-only.

❌ You lose Stripe signature verification

EventBridge doesn’t use webhooks → no HMAC signature. You must rely on:

-connection authentication (AWS IAM + Partner Source handshake),

• and trust AWS transport.

Security is still good but different.

❌ More complex than a single webhook

This is event-driven architecture. You need to:

• manage rules,

• manage permissions,

• manage DLQs,

• coordinate many Lambdas instead of one.

❌ Costs

EventBridge events cost money. Not huge, but not zero.

4. The Hybrid “Best of Both Worlds” Pattern

Many mature companies use this model:

Stripe Webhook → Lambda
               → Verify signature
               → Do minimal DB update
               → Publish clean business events → EventBridge

Why this is powerful:

• Your system never directly depends on Stripe’s event shapes.

• You get security (signature verification).

• You get flexibility (your own event schema).

• You avoid exposing Stripe events across your internal environment.

Example:

• Stripe sends checkout.session.completed

• Your Lambda emits OrderPaid or SubscriptionActivated (cleaner, stable, domain-specific)

This approach is ideal when:

• You want strong security,

• You want minimal coupling to Stripe,

• You want EventBridge's fan-out, DLQ, and routing.

5. Which One Should YOU Use?

Here’s the decision tree:

✅ Choose Stripe Webhooks if:

• You’re building v1.

• You have one service processing payments.

• You want the simplest architecture.

• Latency matters.

• You’re not deeply tied to AWS.

✅ Choose EventBridge Partner Bus if:

• You have multiple downstream consumers.

• You’re moving toward microservices or event-driven architecture.

• You want clean separation of concerns.

• You need cross-account or multi-team routing.

• You want durable, managed event delivery.

✅ Choose the Hybrid Model if:

• You want webhook verification + EventBridge fan-out.

• You want domain events decoupled from Stripe’s event schema.

• You care about long-term maintainability.

6. Conclusion

There is no universal “better” choice.

Both Stripe Webhooks and the EventBridge Partner Event Bus solve the same problem in different ways.

Webhooks give you control, simplicity, and flexibility.

EventBridge gives you scalability, rich routing, and event-driven elegance.

The hybrid model gives you security + scalability + stability.

• If you’re early-stage or building an MVP: start with webhooks.
• If you're scaling to multiple teams or services: EventBridge will save you months of engineering time.
• If you want the cleanest and most future-proof architecture: use a verified webhook → emit your own business events → fan out through EventBridge.