A typical embedded payment follows this process:
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A buyer starts checkout on your platform.
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Your platform collects or tokenizes the buyer’s payment details.
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Your platform sends the payment request to the BlueSnap Payment API.
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The payment is associated with the merchant that owns the transaction.
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BlueSnap authorizes or captures the payment.
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BlueSnap applies the configured platform split or commission, if included.
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Funds become available for payout based on the merchant and platform payout configuration.
When your platform processes payments for multiple merchants, each payment must be associated with the correct merchant that owns the transaction. This association determines how BlueSnap applies merchant-level processing, reporting, split-payment rules, and payout behavior.
If the payment is not associated with the correct merchant, the transaction may be processed, reported, split, or paid out incorrectly.
Use the Right Payment Flow
Choose the payment flow that matches when the merchant is ready to charge the buyer.
Authorize and Capture Immediately
Use an authorization-and-capture flow when the merchant is ready to charge the buyer at checkout. This is the most common flow for standard purchases where the order can be accepted immediately.
Authorize First, Capture Later
Use an authorization-only flow when the merchant needs to confirm inventory, fulfillment, availability, risk, or another business condition before charging the buyer. Capture the authorization when the merchant is ready to complete the sale, or reverse it if the sale will not be completed.
Surcharging
If surcharging is enabled for the merchant account, BlueSnap can apply a surcharge to eligible card transactions. A surcharge is an additional fee added when a customer uses a card to complete a sale, typically to help cover card payment costs.
Surcharging is subject to card brand rules and country, state, and territory requirements. It must be enabled for the merchant account and used only where supported. Do not use surcharge as a platform markup or platform fee.
Securely Collect Payment Details
For card payments, use Hosted Payment Fields and Secure Customer Data Fields to collect sensitive card data without handling full card details directly in your platform environment.
Your platform controls the checkout page, while BlueSnap collects the sensitive card data and returns a token that can be used in a payment request or stored with a vaulted shopper.
Use vaulted shoppers when your platform supports repeat purchases, saved payment methods, or subscriptions.
Track Payment Status
Use the API response for the immediate result of the request, such as whether a payment was approved, declined, or rejected because of a request error. Do not ignore the API response and wait only for webhooks, because this can delay checkout or fulfillment decisions.
Also listen for payment-related webhooks. Use these webhooks to track status changes and post-payment events that happen after the original API response, such as refunds, disputes, chargebacks, and reconciliation updates.
Refund or Cancel a Transaction
Use refunds, cancellations, and authorization reversals to adjust or undo a payment after it has been authorized or captured. Refund behavior should match both the merchant-facing refund policy and the platform fee policy, especially when the original transaction included a split or commission.
For split and refund scenarios, see Platform Split Payments and Merchant Operations.
In the case of any pending refunds, you can manually add funds to a merchant's account balance and process the refunds immediately by leveraging either the Balance Funding APIs or the Merchant Portal.
Test Payment Processing
Test your payment integration before going live. At minimum, test successful payments, failed payments, authorization-only flows, captures, authorization reversals, full and partial refunds, payment status webhooks, and any platform split or commission behavior. If your integration supports stored shoppers or subscriptions, test those flows before going live as well.
Use BlueSnap sandbox test data and test cards to validate expected payment outcomes before enabling live processing.