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When it comes to payment processing, business considerations like payment types, fraud protection, and global support often take center stage. But if you’re a developer working with a payment processing API, you know there are plenty of other things that can impact the success of a payment gateway—easy, straightforward integration and a short development time being high up on the list.

Does your payment gateway give you all the tools you need?

Payment APIs For Developers: A Toolbox Of Necessities

When choosing a payment API, consider the following to gauge its quality:

Does it provide code samples?
Can you try the API right from the docs?
Is the solution easy to implement?

Here’s what to look for more specifically in each of those three areas.

Does it provide code samples?

Does the API documentation for the gateway include plenty of code samples? Copy and paste-ready sample calls aren’t just easy for you to use; they also leave less room for error because you’re not creating them from scratch.

At BlueSnap, we’ve tried to be especially thoughtful about the code we provide, which is why we include samples for all the most popular scenarios, as determined by our merchants. For example, our Developer Hub provides examples for transactions with credit cards, PayPal, vaulted shoppers, merchant transaction IDs, metadata for tax and shipping, and more. These snippets can be plugged into your own environment directly, so you get up and running fast. (By the way, you can share your thoughts with us by clicking “Suggest Edits” anywhere in the documentation—we love feedback!)

Can you try the API right from the docs?

You shouldn’t have to create an account to evaluate a payment gateway API integration. You also shouldn’t have to leave the site you’re on to copy/paste code into an external tool such as Postman to see the results. If the payment processing API you’re considering doesn’t make it easy to try out the API calls, you can do better.


Ready to try it? Check out our Developer Hub and start experimenting with the BlueSnap API now!


Our BlueSnap Developer Hub includes an API Explorer tool (pictured below) that you can use for testing—no account necessary, and you don’t need to leave the docs. Experiment as much as you like—change the parameters, change the values. You’ll get real responses right in the documentation because the API requests are hitting the BlueSnap sandbox environment.

We provide credit card data for experimenting with various outcomes, including successes and failures, so you know exactly what messages to create for your shoppers. We also provide detailed tutorials on many topics, including how to build a checkout form with Hosted Payment Fields, so you can maintain the simplest level of PCI compliance, SAQ-A. With these tools, you can easily see what our secure checkout process looks like from start to finish.

Is the solution easy to implement?

The API should be simple and flexible, so you can either code directly or through a Software Developer Kit (SDK). SDKs shorten the window for development time and help accelerate deployment. SDKs should be available in multiple languages to support different development environments.

BlueSnap SDKs are available in multiple languages, including Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, and C++. We also offer SDKs for iOS and Android, so you can offer frictionless checkout and maximize payment conversions on mobile devices. All our SDKs help you minimize the development window—after all, the sooner you complete development, the sooner you can start processing payments!

Need more information about payment processing APIs?   

We’re more than happy to help! We work hard to constantly improve our developer documentation and to find out what developers want and need when it comes to consuming our APIs. So don’t hesitate to get in touch, or stop by our Developer Hub and have a look around. We’re pretty sure you’ll find what you need, but if there’s anything we can do to make the integration experience easier—and our API offerings better—we’re all ears!

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