Platform-Managed Experience

Use the platform-managed experience when you want merchants to manage account and payment activity inside your own platform.

In this model, merchants do not use the BlueSnap Merchant Portal as their primary day-to-day workspace. Your platform uses BlueSnap APIs, reports, and webhooks to retrieve data, perform actions, and display merchant-management tools in your own system. This gives your platform more control over the merchant experience but also requires more development and operational ownership.

What Your Platform Should Build

At minimum, your platform should give merchants access to the information and actions they need to manage payment activity after approval. The table below summarizes common workflows.

Reporting

Your platform owns the merchant-facing reporting experience.

Use BlueSnap reporting tools to retrieve transaction, settlement, payout, and account data, then display that information in your own system. BlueSnap supports standard reports and custom reports. In a platform-managed model, your platform retrieves standard reports through the Reporting API and can use the Custom Reporting API to create and manage reports tailored to your business needs.

Your platform can use reporting to show merchants:

• Transaction activity
• Settlement activity
• Payout history and payout status
• Current unpaid balances
• Refunds, chargebacks, and adjustments
• Fees and other reconciliation details

For payout-related reporting, see Payouts.

Orders and Transactions

Merchants need a way to find orders, review payment status, and understand transaction history. In a platform-managed experience, your platform should display order and transaction details in your own dashboard. Use BlueSnap payment and reporting data to show information such as:

• Buyer or order reference
• Transaction amount and currency
• Payment status
• Payment method
• Authorization and capture status
• Refund history
• Chargeback or dispute status, if applicable
• Related fees, adjustments, or payout status, if available

Refunds

BlueSnap supports full and partial refunds. In a platform-managed experience, your platform should decide whether merchants can issue refunds directly from your dashboard or whether they must request refunds through your support team.

If you expose refund functionality in your own UI, use the Payment API to trigger refunds. Your platform should show merchants:

• Which transactions are refundable
• The maximum refundable amount
• Whether partial refunds are allowed
• Refund status
• Refund history
• Any effect the refund may have on balances, payouts, or reporting

This keeps the merchant inside your platform while BlueSnap performs the underlying refund action.

Payment Status and Notifications

Your platform should use BlueSnap webhooks to keep merchant-facing payment status up to date. Use notifications to update your system when important events occur, such as:

• Payment approval or decline
• Refund activity
• Payout activity
• Chargeback or dispute activity
• Account or risk-related events, if applicable

Your system should store these events, associate them with the correct merchant, and update the merchant-facing dashboard or notification center.

Your platform should also decide how merchants receive operational alerts, such as refund updates, payout updates, dispute deadlines, risk-related actions, account update requests, or other items that require merchant attention.

Payout Visibility

At minimum, merchants should be able to view current unpaid balance, expected payout dates, recent payouts, payout status, and the transactions, fees, refunds, and adjustments included in each payout.

Use payout notifications and reporting data together. Notifications tell you when a payout was issued. Reports explain what was included in the payout.

Chargebacks and Disputes

BlueSnap teams with Chargebacks911 for chargeback management, including pre-chargeback dispute resolution and chargeback representment. Dispute resolution can help merchants prevent chargebacks by responding to pre-chargeback inquiries, refunding payments when BlueSnap is notified that the cardholder intends to submit a chargeback, or proactively refunding payments made with cards reported lost or stolen before the payment date.

In a platform-managed experience, your platform should decide how merchants are notified about chargebacks and how much dispute-management functionality to expose in your own system. At minimum, your platform should provide visibility into:

• New chargebacks or disputes
• Dispute status
• Dispute amount
• Reason code or dispute category, if available
• Required merchant action
• Representment deadline, if applicable
• Final outcome

Use chargeback webhooks to notify your system when a shopper initiates a chargeback. You can also use BlueSnap reporting and dispute tools to review chargeback activity across your merchant portfolio and investigate merchant-level dispute activity when needed.

Chargeback Process

You can access chargeback activity for linked merchants from your BlueSnap account. In the Chargebacks section, your team can monitor chargeback details, review response due dates and reason codes, accept or represent chargebacks, and track dispute outcomes. A platform-managed chargeback workflow typically follows this flow:

1. Receive a chargeback notification.

2. Store the chargeback details in your system.

3. Display the dispute in your merchant dashboard.

4. Collect representment evidence from the merchant.

5. Use the Chargeback Representment Upload API to submit representment evidence to BlueSnap. Refer to the linked API documentation for more details, such as the file requirements.

6. Track the dispute status and final outcome.

When collecting representment evidence, guide merchants to provide information that matches the chargeback reason code, card brand, and product type. Evidence may include customer and device details, delivery or fulfillment proof, payment and authorization details, refund status, customer communications, terms and conditions, or proof of product or service usage, when available. Keep the representment response concise, relevant, and easy for the issuer to review.

For detailed evidence recommendations by card brand, product type, and reason code, refer to Representing Chargebacks.

Fraud Prevention

BlueSnap provides fraud prevention services, including portfolio-level fraud monitoring. BlueSnap teams with Kount for fraud management and prevention, and BlueSnap’s portfolio fraud prevention service is enabled by default for merchant accounts.

In a platform-managed experience, decide whether merchants need fraud-related visibility or controls in your own dashboard. Your platform may show fraud review status, declined transaction activity, risk-related transaction outcomes, or merchant actions needed to reduce risk.

BlueSnap also monitors merchant accounts and transaction activity behind the scenes to identify concerning trends and recommend actions when needed.

Optional SSO Access for Platform Operators

During implementation, BlueSnap can enable single sign-on access so authorized users from your platform can access linked merchant accounts from your platform environment. This should be an operational tool for your platform team, not as the primary merchant experience. For example, your team may use SSO to review merchant-level activity, investigate support issues, or access BlueSnap-managed tools when needed.

This feature is not enabled by default. Work with your BlueSnap implementation team before launch if your platform needs SSO access to merchant accounts.

Manage your BlueSnap account users via API

Your platform can use BlueSnap’s User Management API to create and manage users in your platform’s BlueSnap account.

Use this API when your platform needs to automate user setup for your own team members, manage access to BlueSnap-supported tools, or align BlueSnap user access with roles in your internal systems. These users belong to your platform’s BlueSnap account and are not created inside individual merchant accounts.

Before launch, decide:

• Which platform users need BlueSnap-side access
• Which roles can view reports, issue refunds, manage disputes, or update settings
• Whether user creation is handled manually in the portal, through the User Management API, or by your support/operations team
• Whether your platform needs single sign-on access for platform users

What BlueSnap Still Handles

Even when your platform owns the merchant-facing experience, BlueSnap still provides the underlying payment infrastructure. This means that BlueSnap handles:

• Payment authorization and processing
• Settlement and payout infrastructure
• Reporting data
• Webhooks
• Refund processing when initiated through APIs
• Chargeback and dispute infrastructure
• Fraud prevention services
• Compliance and risk controls, where applicable