Stripe Checkout example running into CORS error from localhost

I am trying to integrate Stripe Checkout using the instructions given here https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment?integration=checkout for node.

I have followed their instructions to a tee and have updated the API key in the example with an actual (test) one from my account.

I am using React in the frontend and express in the backend. I have enabled cors.

The request from React to the backend succeeds and a preflight request is kicked off to stripe. The preflight response from stripe is a 403 and the actual request is blocked with a CORS error - PreflightMissingAllowOriginHeader

Backend Code (minimal)

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const cors = require("cors");

const stripe = require("stripe")(
  process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
);

app.use(
  cors({
    origin: ["http://localhost:8000", "https://checkout.stripe.com"],
  })
);

app.post("/create-checkout-session", async (req, res) => {
  console.log('getting here 1')
  const session = await stripe.checkout.sessions.create({
    payment_method_types: ["card"],
    line_items: [
      {
        price_data: {
          currency: "usd",
          product_data: {
            name: "T-shirt",
          },
          unit_amount: 2000,
        },
        quantity: 1,
      },
    ],
    mode: "payment",
    success_url: "http://localhost:4242/success.html",
    cancel_url: "http://localhost:4242/cancel.html",
  });
  
  console.log('getting here 2')
  res.redirect(303, session.url);
});

app.listen(4242, () => console.log(`Listening on port ${4242}!`));

Frontend Code

  handleClick = () => {
    const res = fetch(`${process.env.BACKEND_API_URL}/create-checkout-session`, {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        "Content-Type": 'text/html'
      }
    })
  }

Here are some of the things I learned while trying to debug this.

1. Stripe checkout uses AWS Cloudfront and it does not allow options requests (as per Stripe's config)
2. OPTIONS request are not sent to Stripe when I change the request type in the frontend to text/plain. (Yes, that's right, after my server returns the 303 with Stripe's url, Chrome does not send an OPTIONS request to Stripe)
3. Best to avoid redirects when using React

Here is the updated backend and frontend code, respectively, that solved the problem

app.post("/create-checkout-session", async (req, res) => {
  const session = await stripe.checkout.sessions.create({
    payment_method_types: ["card"],
    line_items: [
      {
        price_data: {
          currency: "usd",
          product_data: {
            name: "T-shirt",
          },
          unit_amount: 2000,
        },
        quantity: 1,
      },
    ],
    mode: "payment",
    success_url: "http://localhost:8000/success",
    cancel_url: "http://localhost:8000/cancel",
  });

  res.json({url: session.url}) // <-- this is the changed line
});

  handleClick = async () => {
    const res = await fetch(`${process.env.BACKEND_API_URL}/create-checkout-session`, {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        "Content-Type": 'application/json'
      }
    })
    const body = await res.json()
    window.location.href = body.url
  }