With the constant evolutions in the payments landscape, ensuring that your payment operation supports current and future payment methods is paramount. By integrating with Switch, you get access to every present and future payment method, as well as all the tools required to run a professional and comprehensive payments operation. We offer the last payment integration you will ever need.
Dynamic Forms
Add new payment channels without any changes to your code.
Hosted Checkout
Streamline your checkout process.
REST Integration
Enable custom transaction flows.
Switch architecture was designed with a single integration flow in mind. Our clients are expected to integrate with the Switch Platform once and be able to process any payment methods, without any changes to their code. This reduces development effort and maintenance costs, whilst also improving your time to market. To better understand how to conduct integration access the following resources.
Transaction Flows
Understand the execution flows of your transactions.
Event Handling
Deconstruct your transactions and keep track of their statuses.
Error Codes
Check out the codes and descriptions of all errors that may occur when you communicate with the Switch APIs.
At Switch, we offer three possible integration patterns, which offer differing degrees of liberty to our customers. These are Dynamic Forms, Hosted Checkout, and REST Integration.
What is the right integration for me?
We highly recommend choosing Dynamic Forms. This option provides an efficient, out-of-the-box solution that requires low integration efforts and supports a wide variety of use cases. Our REST API integration is recommended for singular scenarios where Dynamic Forms are unable to comply with your business requirements.
In order to better understand which integration pattern would be better suited to you, please have a look at the table below, which compares these two patterns from a requirements perspective.
| Dynamic Forms | Hosted Checkout | REST Integration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development Effort | Low | Low | High |
| Maintenance Effort | Low | Low | High |
| UI Library | Yes | Yes | No |
| Customizable Look & Feel | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Customizable Transaction Flow | No | No | Yes |
| Web & Mobile | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Native Apps | No | No | Yes |
| PCI-DSS | Filled in and signed SAQ A | Filled in and signed SAQ A | Filled in and signed SAQ A-EP along with quarterly scans by an ISV |
There are several steps to take full advantage of Switch's processing capabilities. Not all the steps are required to process payments, but it is good to have the full picture before making your integration options. First, it is important to go through the steps involved in how we help our clients handle transactions.
- 1
Display Form
The form through which the customer chooses a payment method can be created by you. But keep in mind that if you use Switch's Dynamic Forms to do it, your form will adapt to future payment methods without requiring additional development.
- 2
Create charges and instruments
These are the minimum steps required to process a transaction using Switch.
- 3
Instrument Flows
Handle methods that require redirection or displaying references.
- 4
Event Handling
How your server keeps track of transactions.
- 5
Capturing Funds Later
It applies to recurring or auth-capture methods.
Transaction Elements
Every transaction, regardless of the payment method, has the same elements.
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Charge | The merchant’s intent to initiate a payment flow. In this step, the payment method and provider are chosen and configured by the merchant. |
| Instrument | The customer authorizes the transaction by sending payment details. |
| Payment | The fund transfer per se. |
| Reversal | Element used for reversing a capture or refund that has not yet been cleared, or for voiding an authorization. |
| Refund | Returning the funds to the customer. This only applies to refundable payment methods. |
Instrument Properties
Instruments from different payment methods have specific properties that define how they can be used.
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Captured on Creation | A payment is created automatically when, in the client-side, an instrument is created. |
| Recurring | Multiple payments can be created from a recurring instrument. |
| Refundable | refund can be created. |
| Redirect | The customer must be redirected to an external page to complete the transaction. This process is handled automatically by the Dynamic Forms and JS lib. |
| Reference | The customer will be shown a payment reference to push the funds to. |
Dynamic Forms
The main aim of our Dynamic Forms solution is to provide a flexible UI for web, mobile and POS, that is able to process any current and future payment methods without requiring any changes to the code. Dynamic Forms is composed of a Javascript Client-Side Library that can be easily inserted into your checkout page. It will be responsible for rendering the UI and handling the required communication with the Switch platform to execute any type of transaction.
Tailor Made
With Dynamic Forms, the customization of your checkout process is merely one click away. This integration grants you an array of different payment methods that can be made available to your customers immediately and without fuss.
Future Proof
Using Dynamic Forms, the work required to stay up-to-date is offloaded from your team. This integration option dynamically supports new payment options via communication with the Switch platform, without requiring modifications.
Flexible
Dynamic Forms automatically prepares your website to collect different data points and support different user interaction flows, whilst allowing you to customize the look and feel.
Fast
All the technical complexity is handled by a single Client-Side Library that is responsible for user interaction and communication with the Switch platform.
Easy to Maintain
By leveraging server-side communication to dynamically adapt the user interface and associated experience, Dynamic Forms support any current or future payment methods, thus reducing the maintenance required to stay up-to-date.
Simplified Compliance
Uses by default an iframe configuration, which ensures the customer payment data never touches your website. From a PCI-DSS compliance perspective, this reduces the burden required to process payments.
REST Integration
What about new payment methods?
Our REST API has an endpoint that specifies which components the UI should have, given the payment methods active at the moment.
Whilst having a turnkey solution to process payments on your website can be very useful, there might be scenarios where the customizations needed requires a bespoke solution. If you need to support different platforms, namely web, native mobile apps, and IoT devices, or are looking for a customized user experience with additional steps, REST Integration might be the answer for you.
Our REST Integration leverages the Switch Platform API endpoints to orchestrate transaction execution using a host-to-host communication. You become responsible for rendering the forms and handling user interaction, allowing you to tailor the components to your design and user experience guidelines.
What about Compliance?
REST Integration requires PCI DSS compliance, which means having servers scanned on a quarterly basis by an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV), and at least a filled in and signed SAQ A-EP.
Custom Transaction Flows
The number of steps and the input collected from the user to execute a transaction can be personalized, as long as the three required API calls are executed in between.
Interoperability
Given that this pattern does not rely on a Client-Side Library to collect data, it has a broader reach by being able to support any frontend language, application, or platform where it is possible to execute a REST API call. One such example would be a native mobile application for Android or iOS.
Bespoke User Experience
This integration option allows you to set up the UI according to your specifications, ensuring a consistent design language throughout your application and following your preferred user interaction patterns.
Next Steps
Now that we have outlined the existing integration patterns with the Switch platform, feel free to read more about your integration of choice.