Build your own PayPal with Claude Code

An online payments and wallet service: wallet balance and history, send money by email, payment links and invoices and more.

Big buildPayments, real-time, regulation or heavy infrastructure

The Claude Code prompt

Build my own take on PayPal: an online payments and wallet service. Give it an original name, logo, colours and copy, and do not use PayPal's name, branding or assets.

Version one should have:
- Wallet balance and history
- Send money by email
- Payment links and invoices
- Checkout button for websites
- Refunds and disputes

The hard part: Holding money needs licences. Build invoices and payment links on top of Stripe instead.

How to build it:
1. Read this folder first. If it is empty, set up Next.js (App Router, TypeScript, Tailwind) with Postgres through Prisma or Supabase, and Supabase Auth or Auth.js for sign-in. Write a short PLAN.md with the data model, screens, third-party services and what you are leaving out of version one.
2. Build the core loop end to end before anything else: wallet balance and history, working with real data saved to the database.
3. Add the rest of the features one at a time, and seed realistic demo data so every screen looks alive.
4. Keep API keys in environment variables, and put any paid service behind a small interface with a local stub, so the app runs on a fresh machine without accounts.
5. Run it, click through every screen on desktop and mobile widths, fix what breaks, and finish with a summary of what works, what is stubbed and how to deploy it.

Paste it into Claude Code in an empty folder. It plans first, so read PLAN.md and steer before it starts building.

Version one

  • Wallet balance and history
  • Send money by email
  • Payment links and invoices
  • Checkout button for websites
  • Refunds and disputes

The hard part

Holding money needs licences. Build invoices and payment links on top of Stripe instead.

Make it yours: a niche PayPal ignores, an original name and brand, and one feature it does badly done well.

More to build

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