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What do you know about payment APIs?

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chenmichael

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    • Jul 15, 2026
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    My company is talking about payment and account information APIs. They are planning to get them integrated so as to better help us and our workflow.

    I am confused, mainly about the safety and compliance standards. How do those work? It's a small firm so my opinion would also be taken into account in the meeting. I want to be better informed.
     
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    There is masses of detail on Google about APIs and how they work. To even scratch the surface here would take hours.

    All an API does is provide a bridge between two systems. For example, connecting your website to a payment provider. If your company doesn’t understand how integration works they are not really to begin implementation.
     
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    chenmichael said:
    My company is talking about payment and account information APIs. I am confused, mainly about the safety and compliance standards.
    Click to expand...

    As @fisicx says, in most cases an API is just a piece of software that connects your in-house systems to a third-party system such as PayPal, eBay or Companies House etc.

    So, for example, if your company accepts PayPal and has to do a refund then currently someone may have to process the return/refund internally and then manually log into Paypal, find the right transaction and manually action a refund for the correct amount. With an API that someone just processes the return/refund on your own existing system as they do anyway and then your system can either automatically action a refund on PayPal or you could have a second authorisation step built-in.

    Either way "the safety and compliance standards" is really based around your own internal processes rather than the API itself. If you can give specifics on what the API is planned to do then posters may be able to offer more relevant advice.
     
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    There are a few different types of API, each with their own functions. But as mentioned above, they connect your site to various other sites/services to automate processes.

    One of the compliance standards we see pop up for handling payments is PCI Compliance. This would usually be handled by the payment providers (e.g. Paypal) unless your company directly handles credit/debit card details. We've actually got a blog about that in case you want to check it out, though I'd definitely recommend that you do further research elsewhere too.

    What are you hoping to do with the API, could you elaborate a bit more?

    Kelly at Antropy ✨
     
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    fisicx said:
    There is masses of detail on Google about APIs and how they work. To even scratch the surface here would take hours.

    All an API does is provide a bridge between two systems. For example, connecting your website to a payment provider. If your company doesn’t understand how integration works they are not really to begin implementation.
    Click to expand...
    Thanks that makes sense. I suppose the misunderstanding I had was more about what lies around the API than the API itself.

    We are looking at leveraging APIs to tie payment/account details into our own workflows and thus I am mostly trying to figure out what we should be asking the supplier about in terms of security, restriction of access, and compliance before we start.

    There definitely seems to be a lot more to think about than just the technical functionality of the API.
     
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    Nathanto said:
    As @fisicx says, in most cases an API is just a piece of software that connects your in-house systems to a third-party system such as PayPal, eBay or Companies House etc.

    So, for example, if your company accepts PayPal and has to do a refund then currently someone may have to process the return/refund internally and then manually log into Paypal, find the right transaction and manually action a refund for the correct amount. With an API that someone just processes the return/refund on your own existing system as they do anyway and then your system can either automatically action a refund on PayPal or you could have a second authorisation step built-in.

    Either way "the safety and compliance standards" is really based around your own internal processes rather than the API itself. If you can give specifics on what the API is planned to do then posters may be able to offer more relevant advice.
    Click to expand...
    That's a good way to think of things. This is a much clearer contrast than the refund scenario.

    We're not just talking about automating things like a PayPal return, we're talking about APIs for payment and account information in our situation, so I'm particularly interested in what happens to the data once it hits our own systems.

    We’re working with customers who are quite sensitive about financial data, so I’m trying to make sure we’re thinking about the security and compliance side appropriately rather than considering the API as just another integration.
     
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    antropy said:
    There are a few different types of API, each with their own functions. But as mentioned above, they connect your site to various other sites/services to automate processes.

    One of the compliance standards we see pop up for handling payments is PCI Compliance. This would usually be handled by the payment providers (e.g. Paypal) unless your company directly handles credit/debit card details. We've actually got a blog about that in case you want to check it out, though I'd definitely recommend that you do further research elsewhere too.

    What are you hoping to do with the API, could you elaborate a bit more?

    Kelly at Antropy ✨
    Click to expand...
    That’s useful. One of the things I’ve seen is PCI. We are not intending to process card details ourselves, therefore part of the reason I am attempting to get a feel for where the provider's responsibilities finish and our responsibilities begin.

    The API we're looking at is primarily around payment/account information and getting that information into our own workflows. So I guess my greater issue is what should we be looking at surrounding data access, storage and permissions when considering the provider?
    Thanks for directing me in the proper place, I'll dig into the PCI side also.
     
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    chenmichael said:
    My company is talking about payment and account information APIs. They are planning to get them integrated so as to better help us and our workflow.

    I am confused, mainly about the safety and compliance standards. How do those work? It's a small firm so my opinion would also be taken into account in the meeting. I want to be better informed.
    Click to expand...
    To clarify the situation, is your company asking you to integrate a third-party payment API, or are they planning to build their own proprietary payment API service?
     
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    chenmichael said:
    3rd party because building would take us a lot of time and funds.
    Click to expand...
    All depends on the scope of the project. But if you just want to connect to a payment provider then it's normally very simple. You don't then need to worry about PCI - the payment provider looks after this.
     
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    chenmichael said:
    3rd party because building would take us a lot of time and funds.
    Click to expand...
    Since you are using a third-party provider, the most common approach is to rely on their official documentation. If that documentation is not well-maintained or clear, reach out directly to their support team. In my experience implementing a payment gateway like "Powertranz," I found the documentation wasn't always well-organized, so I contacted their support staff to gather the specific information I needed one step at a time.
     
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    When integrating payment APIs, the most important things to look out for are security and good documentation.
    Providers like Stripe or PayPal are usually the easiest to start with because their developer docs are excellent and very straightforward. The main advice I can give from an IT perspective is to make sure your system is set up to handle 'error responses' correctly, so you don't accidentally double-charge a customer if a timeout occurs.
    Make sure your site has a solid SSL certificate before you go live. Good luck with the integration
     
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    eServers said:
    When integrating payment APIs, the most important things to look out for are security and good documentation.
    Providers like Stripe or PayPal are usually the easiest to start with because their developer docs are excellent and very straightforward. The main advice I can give from an IT perspective is to make sure your system is set up to handle 'error responses' correctly, so you don't accidentally double-charge a customer if a timeout occurs.
    Make sure your site has a solid SSL certificate before you go live. Good luck with the integration
    Click to expand...
    This is some really good advice but I think the original poster is asking for white label api providers, hope they clarify so we can help better.
     
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    chenmichael said:
    Right, we have an our own software so we are looking for 3rd party white label api providers. Which ones did you use?
    Click to expand...
    It’s not really clear what you want this API to do. All the major payment providers have an API you can use for taking payments. All you need to do is integrate the API into your software.
     
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    fisicx said:
    It’s not really clear what you want this API to do. All the major payment providers have an API you can use for taking payments. All you need to do is integrate the API into your software.
    Click to expand...
    Fair enough. I probably haven't explained the use case very well.

    We already have our own software and we want to add payment and account-information functionality to it through a third-party API instead of building that infrastructure ourselves. Ideally we would want the provider to manage the underlying banking/payment connectivity, and we would integrate into our existing workflows and interface.

    We are still defining the exact scope internally, hence why I’m also trying to understand what questions should we be asking potential providers around security, permissions, data handling and compliance.
     
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    @chenmichael - all the payment providers will be compliant. I’d focus on which ones provide the service you require as a cost that is appropriate.

    You mentioned account management, that’s a whole different function as the payment provider will just report payments, it’s up to you to record the details. This isn’t normally an API function.

    @BreeAndrews - no problem with providing the name and a link to the API documents.
     
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    fisicx said:
    @chenmichael - all the payment providers will be compliant. I’d focus on which ones provide the service you require as a cost that is appropriate.

    You mentioned account management, that’s a whole different function as the payment provider will just report payments, it’s up to you to record the details. This isn’t normally an API function.

    @BreeAndrews - no problem with providing the name and a link to the API documents.
    Click to expand...


    That’s really helpful, thank you. We’re exploring both payment and account information APIs because we want to incorporate these features into our current software and cut down on some of the manual tasks in our workflow. Instead of just processing card payments, we’re also keen on accessing relevant account details and possibly initiating payments through the same platform.

    I get that we’ll still need to handle and document certain aspects ourselves, but I assume that integrating the APIs could automate a large portion of the process and lessen the need for manual follow-ups and switching between different systems. Is that correct?
     
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    It’s still very confusing. If you could describe your software and why you need integrated payments it would help. Would customers need to access their accounts? Is this recurring payments? And integration may still require the customer to visit the payment providers website (eg stripe).
     
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    fisicx said:
    It’s still very confusing. If you could describe your software and why you need integrated payments it would help. Would customers need to access their accounts? Is this recurring payments? And integration may still require the customer to visit the payment providers website (eg stripe).
    Click to expand...
    We have our own software and want to add some banking functionality. The idea is that our customers can link their bank accounts and we can then access relevant account and transaction information via an Account Information API rather than having our customers input or update that information manually.

    We are also looking at payment initiation and potentially KYC/identity verification functionality so that we can bring more of these processes into our existing software without having to build the underlying infrastructure ourselves.

    The main task is to reduce manual work and the switching between different systems. It’s not really about taking card payments or recurring subscriptions. We are looking for third party providers that can provide services such as banking connectivity, payment initiation and KYC which we can then integrate into our own software.
     
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    fisicx said:
    You mentioned account management, that’s a whole different function as the payment provider will just report payments, it’s up to you to record the details. This isn’t normally an API function.

    @BreeAndrews - no problem with providing the name and a link to the API documents.
    Click to expand...
    Great, I don't have access to the documentations right now but I can explain what worked for us so OP can get an idea. It can be very overwhelming. Thanks mod.
     
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    @chenmichael We considered several providers, including Salt Edge, Tink, TrueLayer, and Yapily, before deciding on Finexer. It suited our needs and worked well for our smaller team.

    The main benefit of open banking for us has been cutting down on manual tasks (almost similar to what you are explaining). We integrated it with Xero to streamline our workflow, allowing us to bring relevant banking and financial data into the systems we already use, rather than doing everything manually or switching between platforms. It's an accounting firm so..

    We were also interested in the broader features like account information, payment initiation, and KYC, so it was crucial to find a provider that met those needs. Finexer was flexible and a good option for our needs so we decided on that. Always take the demos seriously.

    I suggest figuring out exactly what you need first and then comparing providers based on that. Your requirements can vary significantly depending on whether you primarily need account information, payment initiation, KYC, or a mix of these.

    Good luck, keep us updated.
     
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