Collecting money
Everything here settles through the same Mobile Money rail. What differs is who initiates, where the customer is, and how much you have to build.
Choosing
| You need | Customer sees | Reach for it when | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct charge | Their phone number | A USSD prompt, nothing else | You own the checkout and already know who is paying |
| Payment link | Nothing but a URL | A hosted page you did not build | You want to sell without writing a checkout |
| Invoice | A named customer and line items | An itemised bill, by email or WhatsApp | You are billing, not checking out |
| Storefront | A catalogue | A shop | You want a catalogue, not a single item |
The short version: direct charge when you have a checkout, payment link when you do not, invoice when the customer needs a document.
How they relate
Payment links and invoices are not a different payment system. They are hosted pages in front of the same collection, which is why the asynchronous model, the failure codes and the webhooks are identical across all three. Learn the rail once.
What they share
checkout_url. Both links and invoices return it, and it is where you send the customer. Store it rather than rebuilding it from an id — a sandbox URL carries ?type=sandbox, and dropping the query string produces a page that looks for the resource in live data and 404s.
The same webhooks. payment.success and payment.failed fire for a payment on a link exactly as for a direct charge.
Idempotency. Every create call takes an Idempotency-Key.
Amounts in whole XAF. Integers, minimum 100. No minor units, no multiplying by 100. 5000 means five thousand francs.
One difference that catches people
A payment link created through the API carries your API key, so payments on it emit webhooks to your endpoints. A link created in the dashboard does not, and you will not receive integrator webhooks for it.
If you are testing webhooks against a link you made by clicking around in the dashboard, that is why nothing is arriving.
Next steps
- How a payment works — the rail underneath all four
- Payment links — the no-code surface, and its API
- Invoices — itemised billing with a hosted pay page
- API reference — exact fields for every call