Create a Charge

Authorize charge

The Authorize endpoint creates a loan and reserves the funds. When you authorize a charge, Affirm generates a charge_id that you can use to reference the charge moving forward. You must authorize a charge to fully create it.

❗️
You must authorize a charge for it to be considered active. When it's not active, the user can't see the loan and you can't capture the funds. We recommend authorizing the loan as soon as you receive a checkout token.

To authorize a charge, you need the checkout_token that's returned from your client integration.

curl https://sandbox.affirm.com/api/v2/charges/
     -X POST
     -u "{public_api_key}:{private_api_key}"
     -H "Content-Type: application/json"
     -d '{"checkout_token": "{checkout_token}","order_id": "{order_id}"}'

$endpoint = "https://sandbox.affirm.com/api/v2/charges";
$data = '{"checkout_token": "' . $_POST["checkout_token"] . '"}';
try {
 $response = callAffirm($endpoint, $data);
 // Handle the response
} catch (Exception $e) {
 // Handle the exception
}

using(var httpClient = new HttpClient()) {
	using(var request = new HttpRequestMessage(new HttpMethod("POST"), "https://sandbox.affirm.com/api/v2/charges")) {
		var base64authorization = Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("<public_api_key>:<private_api_key>"));
		request.Headers.TryAddWithoutValidation("Authorization", $ "Basic {base64authorization}");
		request.Content = new StringContent("{\"checkout_token\":\"<checkout_token>\"}");
		request.Content.Headers.ContentType = MediaTypeHeaderValue.Parse("application/json");
		var response = await httpClient.SendAsync(request);
		HttpContent responseContent = response.Content;
		using(var reader = new StreamReader(await responseContent.ReadAsStreamAsync())) {
			Console.WriteLine(await reader.ReadToEndAsync());
		}
		Console.ReadKey();
	}
}

You receive a response that looks like this with the charge_id:

{
   "id":"ALO4-UVGR",
   "created":"2016-03-18T19:19:04Z",
   "currency":"USD",
   "amount":6100,
   "auth_hold":6100,
   "payable":0,
   "void":false,
   "expires": "2016-04-18T19:19:04Z",
   "order_id":"JKLM4321",
   "events":[
      {
         "created":"2014-03-20T14:00:33Z",
         "currency":"USD",
         "id":"UI1ZOXSXQ44QUXQL",
         "transaction_id":"TpR3Xrx8TkvuGio0",
         "type":"auth"
      }
   ],
   "details":{
      "items":{
         "sweater-a92123":{
            "sku":"sweater-a92123",
            "display_name":"Sweater",
            "qty":1,
            "item_type":"physical",
            "item_image_url":"http://placehold.it/350x150",
            "item_url":"http://placehold.it/350x150",
            "unit_price":5000
         }
      },
      "order_id":"JKLM4321",
      "shipping_amount":400,
      "tax_amount":700,
      "shipping":{
         "name":{
            "full":"John Doe"
         },
         "address":{
            "line1":"325 Pacific Ave",
            "city":"San Francisco",
            "state":"CA",
            "zipcode":"94112",
            "country":"USA"
         },
        "phone_number": "4153334567",
        "email": "[email protected]"
      },
      "discounts": {
        "RETURN5": {
          "discount_amount":    500,
          "discount_display_name": "Returning customer 5% discount"
        },
        "PRESDAY10": {
          "discount_amount":    1000,
          "discount_display_name": "President's Day 10% off"
        }
      }
   }
}

After successfully authorizing a charge and receiving the response object, your site does the following:

Validates that the authorized amount equals the order total.
Stores the charge_id
Marks the order payment as pending.

If the authorization fails, your site could potentially store this checkout attempt, as it is not required on our end.

📘
Only authorize a given Affirm loan once for the entire amount of the transaction being purchased. If you have a specific use case where this may be difficult, please contact us at [email protected] or use the widget at the bottom of the page.

Capture a charge

After an order has been fulfilled, you must send a Capture API request to Affirm to capture or settle the funds. Perform this activity from your secure back-end systems. To capture a previous authorization, you need the charge_id provided in the Authorization API response. There aren't any required fields that need to be stored from the Capture response.

Capturing the funds is similar to capturing a credit card transaction. After capturing the loan, we:

Notify the customer that the loan has been captured and that their first payment is due to Affirm in 30 days.
Pay the merchant within 2-3 business days.

curl https://sandbox.affirm.com/api/v2/charges/{CHARGE_ID}/capture
     -X POST
     -u {public_api_key}:{private_api_key}"
     -H "Content-Type: application/json"
     -d '{"order_id": "{order_id}", "shipping_carrier": "USPS", "shipping_confirmation": "1Z23223"}'

$endpoint = "https://sandbox.affirm.com/api/v2/charges";
$url = $endpoint . "/" . $_GET["id"] . "/capture";
$data = '';
try {
 $response = callAffirm($url, $data);
// Handle the response
} catch (Exception $e) {
 // Handle the exception

You then receive a response with the confirmation.

{
  "fee": 600,
  "created": "2016-03-18T00:03:44Z",
  "order_id": "JKLM4321",
  "currency": "USD",
  "amount": 6100,
  "type": "capture",
  "id": "O5DZHKL942503649",
  "transaction_id": "6dH0LrrgUaMD7Llc"
}