Managing Charges

Learn about managing charges in your payment gateway.

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Switching to the Transactions API

Affirm has moved to the new Transactions API. While we will continue to support Charges API, we recommend using Transactions API. Transactions APIs support Leases serviced by LTO providers (Snap, Katapult, etc.) in addition to processing payments financed by installment loans. You can find more information here.

Overview

Charges represent the Affirm loans that are issued to the end-user. You can interact with charges via the Charges API in order to change the state of that charge, update metadata, or retrieve details.

Charge authorization

Charge authorization occurs after a user has successfully completed the Affirm checkout flow and returns back to the merchant site. Authorizing the charge generates the charge_id that will be used to reference this loan moving forward.

Charge actions

You can integrate various charge actions into your back-end order management system, where you normally fulfill orders and process payments, refunds, and cancelations.

You can use the Charges API to manage charges with the following actions:

These actions allow you to manage charges through various states such as authorized, captured, voided, etc.