Overview & Concepts
In this section, you will find a set of guides that walk you through developing and launching a Payments integration with LoyaltyPlant. It is intended to accompany the Payments API specification.
1. What Payments is
LoyaltyPlant offers a white-label e-commerce, loyalty and marketing platform for restaurant chains. Customers make orders through the mobile or web app, collect loyalty points for online and in-store orders, and spend those points on rewards in the app.
The Payments API allows your payment gateway to be used to process customers' payments on online orders.
Your integration is that provider. LoyaltyPlant does not ask you to call it to "create a payment". Instead, LoyaltyPlant drives every payment: it calls a small REST service that you host, one call per payment operation (authorize, capture, refund, …). Your service translates each call into requests to your PSP (payment service provider) and returns the outcome.
You are responsible for one thing: a standalone HTTPS service that implements the Payments Integration API and talks to your PSP behind it.
2. What you build
A standalone HTTPS service that implements the Payments Integration API per the Payments API specification.
- LoyaltyPlant → your service — LoyaltyPlant calls your endpoints (
/v1/authorize,/v1/sale, …) to run each operation. It authenticates with a bearer token you validate. - Your service → your PSP — how you talk to your PSP is entirely up to you; LoyaltyPlant never sees it.
- Your service → LoyaltyPlant (async) — when a payment can't finish synchronously (3-D Secure, a redirect/hosted page), your PSP later notifies you, and you report the final result back to LoyaltyPlant with one callback. See Payment Flows.
You only ever expose endpoints to, and call back into, LoyaltyPlant. Everything else in the LoyaltyPlant platform is internal and out of scope for your integration.
In order to build it, you can use one of two approaches, both of which implement the same API contract:
| API integration | SDK integration (Java) | |
|---|---|---|
| How | Implement the REST endpoints yourself | Add the payments-integration-sdk dependency and implement one interface |
| Language | Any (Node, Go, Python, .NET, Java, …) | Java / JVM only |
| You write | HTTP routing, (de)serialization, auth, idempotency, the endpoints | Just the PaymentIntegration methods — a ready-made controller exposes the endpoints |
| Contract drift risk | You keep your models in sync with the spec | DTOs are generated from the same spec — no drift |
| Best when | You aren't on the JVM, or you want full control | You're a Java shop and want the fastest path |
| Guide | API Integration Guide | SDK Integration Guide |
Note: The
payments-integration-sdkis not publicly available — LoyaltyPlant provides access to it after the project kickoff.
3. Integration project stages
From the first meeting to production traffic, an integration moves through five stages, each with a clear exit before the next begins.
3.1 Kickoff
The project teams from LoyaltyPlant and your side meet. LoyaltyPlant gives a short overview of both companies, walks through this documentation and the integration process, and agrees on a communication channel. Afterwards, LoyaltyPlant provisions a test environment and shares the set of test cases relevant to your integration.
3.2 Development
You build the integration following the SDK Integration Guide or API Integration Guide. Ask questions or request additional working sessions with LoyaltyPlant whenever you need them. This stage is complete when every item on the Integration Checklist is satisfied.
3.3 Testing & QA review
You run your own testing against the test cases LoyaltyPlant provided and confirm the integration behaves correctly, then send a test report mapping each test case to the order ID(s) you produced for it. LoyaltyPlant's QA team reviews the integration and your report; if anything is wrong, LoyaltyPlant flags it, you fix it, and the review repeats until everything passes.
3.4 Certification
With the test cases verified, LoyaltyPlant schedules a demo where you walk through the key flows in your product, show where the data LoyaltyPlant needs appears, and answer any open questions. The demo is recorded for internal training. LoyaltyPlant then officially confirms your integration as certified.
3.5 Pilot deployment
LoyaltyPlant enables the integration for a single client at a small number of outlets and watches it under real traffic — confirming correct operation, monitoring for failures, and resolving any issue as a priority. Once the pilot is stable, the integration is fully approved and LoyaltyPlant rolls it out to additional clients and outlets.
Next: General Requirements →