What are the ways to collect a payment from a client, and should I enter their card for them?

There are three main ways, and all of them use your connected Stripe account:

1. Payment link: open the client's contact, add a purchase, select the product and click Generate link. Send the link; the client clicks it and buys.
2. Payment form on your website: build a form with the Two step Payment element in the form builder and add it to your page, so the client buys there.
3. Add a card manually: add a credit card to the client's account yourself, then add the purchase.

We recommend the first two, because it is always better to let the customer enter their own card. Stripe can become cautious if it sees many cards entered from the same computer and IP address, because that is how fraudsters operate. An occasional manual entry is fine, but if every customer is added this way Stripe may review your account closely.

Taking cards through Stripe on your own page also looks much more credible than sending someone a PayPal link.