What causes "Payment provider is not configured" in hcengineering/platform?

Set the payment provider configuration env vars (provider name + API key + service token) and restart the service

Payment provider is not configured

Error message

Payment provider is not configured

What it means

The create-subscription route responds 503 'Payment provider is not configured' when the provider or serviceToken was undefined at server creation time. The payment capability is intentionally disabled because required configuration (provider selection / credentials) was not supplied to createServer.

Source

Thrown at services/payment/pod-payment/src/server.ts:198

  )

  // ============ Generic Payment Service Endpoints ============
  // These endpoints are provider-agnostic and work with any payment provider

  /**
   * POST /api/v1/subscriptions/:workspace/subscribe
   * Create a subscription for a workspace
   * Body: SubscribeRequest { type: 'tier' | 'support', plan: string, ... }
   */
  app.post(
    '/api/v1/subscriptions/:workspace/subscribe',
    subscriptionRateLimiter,
    withToken,
    withLoginInfo,
    withOwner,
    (req: RequestWithAuth, res: Response) => {
      if (provider === undefined || serviceToken === undefined) {
        res.status(503).json({ error: 'Payment provider is not configured' })
        return
      }

      void handleRequest(
        ctx,
        'create-subscription',
        async (ctx) => {
          const workspaceUuid = req.token?.workspace
          const accountUuid = req.token?.account
          const request = req.body as SubscribeRequest
          const loginInfo = req.loginInfo as WorkspaceLoginInfo

          if (accountUuid === undefined) {
            res.status(401).json({ error: 'Missing account in token' })
            return
          }

          if (workspaceUuid === undefined) {

View on GitHub (pinned to 63e28dc964)

Solutions

Set the payment provider configuration env vars (provider name + API key + service token) and restart the service
Check deployment/secrets (helm values, .env, secret manager) actually include the payment provider keys
Verify the config-loading code maps the env vars into the provider/serviceToken passed to createServer
If the provider is intentionally disabled, don't expose/call the subscription endpoints

Example fix

// before (env)
# PAYMENT_PROVIDER unset
// after
PAYMENT_PROVIDER=stripe
STRIPE_API_KEY=sk_live_...
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_...
SERVICE_TOKEN=...

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

if (process.env.PAYMENT_PROVIDER === undefined || process.env.PAYMENT_SERVICE_TOKEN === undefined) {
  throw new Error('Payment provider env vars must be set before starting the server')
}

Prevention

Validate all required env vars at startup, fail fast before listening
Add a readiness/health check that reports payment-provider config status
Keep payment secrets in the deployment secret manager for every environment
Document required env vars per provider (stripe/polar)

When it happens

Trigger: createServer invoked without a payment provider (e.g. POLAR vs STRIPE selection env var unset) or without the service token; deployment missing payment-related env vars; feature deliberately disabled for that environment.

Common situations: Fresh staging environment where only the DB and auth env vars were configured; docker-compose file omitting payment secrets; config typo in the provider env var name.

Understand the failure class

Background: "environment variable is not set" and "Missing keys in environment" errors: what missing required env var messages mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of hcengineering/platform@63e28dc964 (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d6a12d267ee7549b. Report an issue: GitHub.