title: Understanding Stripe's API authentication
body: <p>Stripe's API uses HTTP Basic Authentication over HTTPS for authentication. Per the <a href="https://stripe.com/docs/api/curl#authentication" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>instructions</strong></a>, this requires including a secret API key in the request.   </p>
  
  <p>However, the Stripe dashboard provides us with two keys, one public and one secret. What is the public key used for?</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wIKcT.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>