🌊Payment flows

Understand the flow of a transaction through PaySwitcher

This chapter will cover the payment flows available with PaySwitcher. Please reach out to us to learn more about the payment flows supported!

Payments 101

If you're complete beginner to Digital Payments, take a look at this Payments 101 blog to get familiar with terminologies.

Payments flow

There are multiple stages in a Payment flow depending on the payment methods that are involved. Considering an one-time payment method where there was no redirection involved, the following stages form the Payment flow:

a) Creating a Payment: When your customer wants to checkout, create a payment by hitting the payments/create endpoint. Fetch and store the payment_id and client_secret

b) Loading the SDK: After your customer checks out, load the PaySwitcher SDK by initiating it with the client_secret and publishable_key

c) SDK being rendered: After you initiate the SDK, the SDK makes several API calls involving the /sessions and /payment_methods endpoints to load relevant payment methods and any saved cards associated with the customer

d) Customer enters the payment method data: After the SDK is fully rendered, your customer would choose a payment method and enter the relevant information and click pay

e) Confirming the payment: After the customer clicks pay, the SDK calls the payments/confirm endpoint with the customer's payment method details and post response, it displays the payment status

Here's a more detailed version of the payment flow:

How does Payment flow vary across Payment methods?

Customer Action	Direct/Redirect flows	Payment- finalized immediately	Payment- finalized later
Customer action required before payments/ confirm	Within PaySwitcher SDK	Non 3DS Cards	Bank Debits like ACH Debit, BACS Debit, SEPA Debit
Customer action required before payments/ confirm	3rd party Redirect/SDK	Wallets like Apple Pay, Google pay, Paypal, AliPay BNPL like Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm
Customer action required after payments/ confirm	3rd party Redirect	3DS cards Bank Redirects like iDeal, Giropay, eps	Bank Transfers like ACH Transfer, SEPA Transfer, BACS Transfer, Multibanco Crypto wallets like Cryptopay

Use-cases supported by PaySwitcher

Accept online payments

Get started with accepting one time payments globally on your online store

Setup mandates & recurring payments

Setup payments for a future date or charge your customers on a recurring basis

Manage payouts

Facilitate payouts for global network of partners and service providers

Save a card during payment

Learn how you can save your customers' cards in a secure PCI compliant manner

Manage payments on your platform / marketplace

Accept payments from your customers and process payouts to the sellers on your marketplace

Accept payments on your e-commerce platform

Give your Wordpress store a lightweight and embedded payment experience with the PaySwitcher WooCommerce plugin

Create payment links

Accept payments for your products through reusable links without writing any code

What are PaymentIntent and PaymentAttempt objects and how do they work in PaySwitcher?

PaySwitcher uses the PaymentIntent object to track the status of a payment initiated by you. Since, PaySwitcher enables retrying a single payment multiple times across different processors until a successful transaction, we track each of these payment attempts through separate PaymentAttempt objects.

While PaymentIntent and PaymentAttempt have their own state machines, the various states in PaymentAttempt are also constrained by their respective mapping to the PaymentIntent statuses.

PaymentIntent state machine:

The following is an abridged version of the PaymentIntent state machine flow that covers majority of the above payment use-cases.

%%{
  init: {
    'theme': 'forest',
    'themeVariables': {
      'fontSize': '14px',
      'background': '#17202A'
}
  }
}%%

flowchart TD

A{PaymentsAPI} --> |amount,currency|RequiresPaymentMethod
    RequiresPaymentMethod -->|payment_method| RequiresConfirmation
    RequiresConfirmation --> |confirm| Processing
    Processing --> AuthType{auth type\nselection}
    AuthType --> |3ds| RequiresCustomerAction
    AuthType --> |no-3ds| CaptureMethod{capture method\nselection}

    CaptureMethod --> |manual| RequiresCapture
    CaptureMethod --> |automatic| Succeeded
    RequiresCustomerAction --> CustomerAction{customer_action\nresult}
    CustomerAction -->|success| CaptureMethod
    CustomerAction -->|failure| Failed

    RequiresCapture --> |capture|Succeeded
 

PaymentAttempt state machine:

The following is an abridged version of the PaymentAttempt state machine flow that covers majority of the above payment use-cases.

%%{
  init: {
    'theme': 'forest',
    'themeVariables': {
      'fontSize': '16px',
      'background': '#17202A'
}
  }
}%%


flowchart TD

    AuthenticationFailed
    AuthenticationPending
    AuthenticationSuccessful
    Authorized
    AuthorizationFailed
    Charged
    Voided
    CaptureInitiated
    CaptureFailed
    Pending
    PaymentMethodAwaited
    ConfirmationAwaited
    DeviceDataCollectionPending

    A{PaymentsAPI} --> |amount,currency|PaymentMethodAwaited
    PaymentMethodAwaited -->|payment_method| ConfirmationAwaited
    ConfirmationAwaited --> |confirm| Pending

    %% Before calling the connector change status to Pending
    Pending --> CallConnector{CallConnector}
    CallConnector -->|Success| AuthType{auth_type}
    CallConnector -->|Fail| AuthorizationFailed
    AuthType --> |no-3ds| CaptureMethod{capture_method} 
    AuthType --> |3ds| DeviceDataCollectionPending
    DeviceDataCollectionPending --> |CollectDeviceData|AuthenticationPending --> Authenticate{Authenticate}
    Authenticate --> |Success| AuthenticationSuccessful --> CaptureMethod{capture method}
    Authenticate --> |Failure| AuthenticationFailed
    
    %% Capture
    CaptureMethod --> |automatic| Charged
    CaptureMethod --> |manual| Authorized

    Authorized --> |capture| CaptureInitiated --> Capture{Capture at connector}
    Capture -->|Success| Charged
    Capture -->|Failed| CaptureFailed

    %% Payment can be voided after calling the connector but not charged
    %% This will not void the payment at connector
    DeviceDataCollectionPending -->|void| Voided
    AuthenticationPending -->|void| Voided

    %% Voiding a payment after it is Authorized will void at connector
    Authorized -->|void|Voided