0️ 0️ 0️ Zero Amount Authorization

Best way to validate customer payment data and charge the customer later

In this section, we will understand zero-auth flow, it's usage, and webhook consumption

The zero amount authorization flow in PaySwitcher allows the merchant to validate customer payment data and charge the customer later. On customer registration, the merchant can initiate a zero-auth flow transaction with PaySwitcher to authenticate the customer payment method (card, bank account etc.) and receive authorization from the customer to use the payment method to charge them at a later point. A payment_method_id would be created and issued to the merchant. And in the future they can charge against this payment_method_id.

The following API cURLs demonstrate the usage of the zero-auth flow. The example below uses the credit card payment method. But this can be extended to bank debits and other payment methods as well.

How to use the zero amount authorization flow?

1. Creating a 0 amount payment along with setup_future_usage= off_session to set up a mandate to store and charge the customer's payment method later ( Called as 'CIT' : Customer initiated transaction)

curl --location 'http://sandbox.payswitcher.com/payments' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'api-key: <enter your PaySwitcher API key here>' \
--data-raw '{
"amount": 0,
"currency": "USD",
"confirm": false,
"customer_id": "zero_auth_test_customer",
"email": "[e-mail]",
"name": "John Doe",
"phone": "999999999",
"phone_country_code": "+1",
"description": "Its my first payment request",
"profile_id": <enter the relevant profile id>,
"setup_future_usage": "off_session"
}'

1. Confirm the payment after collecting payment information from the user [You can skip this step if you are using the PaySwitcher Unified Checkout]

curl --location 'http://http://sandbox.payswitcher.com/payments/{{payment_id}}/confirm' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'api-key: <enter your PaySwitcher API key here>' \
--data-raw '{
    "confirm": true,
    "payment_method": "card",
    "payment_method_type": "credit",
    "payment_method_data": {
        "card": {
            "card_number": "4111111111111111",
            "card_exp_month": "01",
            "card_exp_year": "2035",
            "card_holder_name": "joseph Doe",
            "card_cvc": "100"
        }
    },
    "customer_id": "GC222",
    "setup_future_usage": "off_session",
    "payment_type": "setup_mandate",
    "customer_acceptance": {
        "acceptance_type": "online",
        "accepted_at": "1963-05-03T04:07:52.723Z",
        "online": {
            "ip_address": "127.0.0.1",
            "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.110 Safari/537.36"
        }
    },
    "browser_info": {
        "ip_address": "172.0.0.1"
    },
    "billing": {
        "address": {
            "line1": "1467",
            "line2": "Harrison Street",
            "line3": "Harrison Street",
            "city": "San Fransico",
            "state": "California",
            "zip": "94122",
            "country": "US",
            "first_name": "joseph",
            "last_name": "Doe"
        },
        "phone": {
            "number": "9000000001",
            "country_code": "+91"
        }
    }
}'

1. Retrieve the payment_method_id that was created against the above payment by retrieving the payment. You will get the payment_method_id in the response

curl --location 'https://sandbox.payswitcher.com/payments/<pass the payment_id>' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'api-key: <enter your PaySwitcher API key here>' \

1. Charge the customer later by passing the payment_method_id (Called as 'MIT': Merchant initiated Transaction)

Pass the above payment_method_id under the recurring_details object along with off_session=true in the payments request and confirm the payment. Make sure you are using the same customer_id and profile_id from the CIT.

curl --location 'http://sandbox.payswitcher.com/payments' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'api-key: use your PaySwitcher API key' \
--data-raw '{
    "amount": 1231,
    "currency": "USD",
    "confirm": true,
    "customer_id": "zero_auth_test_customer",
    "profile_id": <enter the relevant profile id>
    "off_session": true,
    "recurring_details": {
        "type": "payment_method_id",
        "data": "pm_lmTnIO5EdCiiMgRPrV9x"
    },
}'