Creating Payment Intents

Early Feedback

Creating a Payment Intent is typically the step before creating a Payment.

The Payment Intent object was designed with the goal of providing customers with as much feedback about their Payment as early as possible.

Calculating Fees

As soon as you create a Payment Intent, you can see the Payment fees applicable to a Payment.

However, the more information you tell us about a Payment Intent, the more accurate the information you receive about fees in our response payloads as the customer gets closing to transacting.

Calculating Fees with Post Payment Intents

For example, you can create a Payment Intent with a Payer (payerId), a Recipient (recipientId), no Payment Method (PaymentMethodId) and you will receive a set of fees applicable to a Payment Intent, mostly derived from the Recipient (i.e. a wire Recipient will be subject to a fixed flat-dollar fee).

Quoting Delivery Timelines

The same framework to leverage Payment Intents described above to calculate fees applies to quoting delivery timelines.

Let's continue to build off the previous example. Thus far, you have created a Payment Intent with a Payer (payerId), a Recipient (recipientId), and no Payment Method (PaymentMethodId).

Patching Payment Intents To Retrieve a More Accurate Delivery Date

Down the road, as you collect more information about the customer's choice of Payment form, you could update the Payment Intent and pass in a paymentMethodId.

In the response, you will receive a new deliveryDate enhanced by the Payment Method (i.e. bank account Payment Methods will likely push the fulfillment of the Payment a few business days out).

Additionally, the fees on a bank account as a Payment Method will be returned, if applicable.

Expedited Payments

We offer an expedited option for US check if faster delivery is required. The boolean flag used to create an expedited payment is: isExpedited: true.

The delivery timelines for expedited payments can be referenced here.

Additional fees will be assessed for expedited payments and can be found here.

Communicating Feasibility

Arguably the most powerful feature of Payment Intents is the ability to receive immediate feedback on the feasibility of a Payment.

In particular, card brands and card issuers have a fixed and rigid set of guidelines and restrictions on permissible Payment types.

Using Plastiq Connect's POST Payment Intents endpoint, you can synchronously receive feedback regarding the feasibility of a Payment Intent.

Determining the Viability of a Payment with Post Payment Intents

As an example, both card brands and card issuers prohibit credit card Payments to Recipients operating under the 'Home Mortgages and Home Equity Line of Credit' Category.

The Payment Intent would have a status of NOT_CAPTURABLE and would return 'CARD_BRAND_BLOCK' or 'CARD_ISSUER_BLOCK' codes as potentially applicable statusReasons.

Try it out