Documentation

How Pay-Pi works

Pay-Pi is a single REST API for accepting money and paying it out. You integrate one set of endpoints; Pay-Pi handles merchant onboarding, card and ACH processing, compliance, and payouts. Payments are processed through Finix under the hood.

Base URL & authentication

All API requests go to the Connect API over HTTPS:

https://connect.pay-pi.com

Authenticate every request with your secret API key in the X-Api-Key header. Live keys are prefixed lc_live_. Create and revoke keys in your dashboard. 

X-Api-Key: lc_live_...

The end-to-end flow

A typical integration moves through these steps:

  1. Onboard the merchant. Send the merchant through a hosted Finix onboarding form. Until they're approved, charges are disabled. Track their state with GET /v1/onboarding/status.
  2. Tokenize the buyer. On your checkout page, collect the buyer's card or bank details with Finix.js so raw details never touch your server. You get back a single-use finixToken or a reusable finixInstrumentId.
  3. Charge. Call POST /v1/payments with the amount and the token/instrument to create a payment.
  4. Settlement. Card payments settle synchronously — the response tells you the outcome. ACH payments come back PENDING and settle asynchronously; you learn the final result from a webhook.
  5. Manage. Fetch a payment with GET /v1/payments/{id} or reverse it with POST /v1/payments/{id}/refund.
  6. Payouts. Net funds (after fees) settle to the merchant's bank account on Pay-Pi's payout schedule.

Fees

Pay-Pi charges a flat, per-transaction application fee, deducted from each successful payment:

  • Card: 2.5% + $0.30
  • ACH: $1.00 flat

Every payment response includes the exact fee applied as applicationFeeCents.

What's supported today

Card-not-present (online) card payments and ACH are live now. Card-present (in-person) acceptance is on the roadmap and will arrive with the Pay-Pi POS app.

Next steps