CentraPoint

Getting started

Introduction

What the CentraPoint API does, how it fits with hosted checkout and gateways, and where to start.

On this page

CentraPoint is a payments platform for businesses in South Africa and across Africa. It gives you invoicing, hosted payment links, recurring billing, debit orders and reconciliation on top of the payment gateways you already use. This site documents the public REST API that your own systems use to take payments through CentraPoint, and how the hosted payment flow and gateway notifications behave.

What you can build#

  • Invoice your customers: keep customers in sync from your CRM, create VAT invoices, email them with a pay link and record EFT or cash payments.
  • Bill on a schedule: card subscriptions charged automatically by the gateway, or an invoice per billing cycle.
  • Create payment links from your system: an order, booking or account statement in your application becomes a CentraPoint-hosted payment page you can email, SMS or redirect to.
  • Check whether a payment succeeded: find the payments for your order and look each up by its reference and fulfil the order only once it is complete.
  • Offer many payment methods with one integration: cards, Instant EFT, mobile money and more through the gateways your organisation connects in the dashboard.

How it fits together#

  1. Your server calls POST /api/v1/payment-links with an API key and your order ID as externalReference, and receives a url.
  2. The payer opens the link, enters their details, chooses a payment method and is sent to the gateway.
  3. The gateway notifies CentraPoint server-to-server. CentraPoint verifies the notification and updates the transaction.
  4. CentraPoint sends a signed webhook (e.g. payment.complete) to your endpoint.
  5. Your server verifies the webhook and fulfils the order. As a fallback, it can find the payment references with GET /api/v1/payment-links?externalReference=… and check them with GET /api/v1/transactions/{reference}.

The same flow works for invoices: create the customer and invoice, send the invoice's payUrl, and listen for invoice.paid. The v1 API covers customers, invoices, payment links, subscriptions and transactions, plus outbound webhooks; see the API reference.

Base URL and versioning#

All API requests go to https://app.centrapoint.co.za over HTTPS. The current version is v1 and is part of the path (/api/v1/…). Request and response bodies are JSON.

Next steps#

QuickstartCreate an API key and make your first request in five minutes.AuthenticationAPI key format, plan requirements and keeping keys safe.WebhooksGet signed notifications in your systems when payments change status.Payment flowWhat happens between creating a link and a completed payment.API referenceEvery endpoint, generated from the OpenAPI specification.