How a hosted checkout works
The merchant's server creates a payment session through the provider's API, with the amount, the currency and the order reference, and receives a URL. The buyer is sent to that URL, chooses a payment method, enters the details and completes any 3-D Secure step on the provider's page.
The provider then returns the buyer to the merchant's success or failure page. That redirect can be interrupted, so the merchant treats the provider's webhook, a server-to-server message, as the record of the outcome.
What a hosted checkout gives and takes
- Fast to integrate: one API call and a redirect
- New payment methods and 3-D Secure changes arrive with no work by the merchant
- Card data stays with the provider, which narrows the merchant's PCI DSS scope
- Limited control over the layout: usually a logo, colours and the order of methods
- A change of domain at the moment of payment, which some buyers distrust
Who uses a hosted checkout
Small merchants, businesses that send invoices or payment links, and sectors in which an acquirer asks for card data to stay with the provider. A payment gateway normally offers a hosted page next to embedded fields and a direct API, so a merchant can start hosted and move later.
Hosted checkout or embedded checkout?
- Embedded checkout
- The provider's form sits inside the merchant's page, in an iframe or hosted fields. The buyer never leaves the site, and the merchant looks after the page around the form.
- Payment link
- A URL sent by email, chat or QR code that opens a hosted checkout for one order. The link is the delivery, and the hosted page is what opens.
Where a hosted checkout shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- CheckoutA hosted checkout for cards, wallets, bank payments and crypto, routed to the best provider.
- Card acquiringCard acceptance on the phone, in store and online, through the acquirer you choose.
- Fraud & riskReal-time fraud scoring, limits and case management, with the risk engines you already trust.