Hosted In Person Checkout

Hosted In Person Checkout is our simplest method for taking In Person payments using PaymentExpress. When the cashier is ready to take payment for a particular set of items and amounts, this information is transmitted to PaymentExpress to hand off the cart to PaymentExpress for payment, initiating the process for payment.

Step 1: Create a Cart to Pay

With a customer present with your cashier, and a cashiering station with PIN pad available to the cashier, the cashier would work in your system of record to select what items the customer is ready to make payment for. This can be one or more items in the same transaction depending on your needs.

When you are ready to hand this cart off to PaymentExpress for processing a payment, you will make a request to one of our Cart APIs to create the cart in our system. The request is a POST request similar to the below. The URL for this request will differ based on which integration style you choose.

{
    "request": {
        "clientTransactionId": "F4BEF9CACEECE59",
        "location": "<<defaultOTCLocation>>",
        "resultUrls": {
            "receipt": "https://clientsite.gov/receipt"
        },
        "meta": {
            "extra information": "here"
        }
    },
    "otc": {
        "cashier": {
            "name": "<<defaultCashier>>"
        },
    },
    "items": [
        {
            "clientItemId": "1029347859728",
            "description": "Property Taxes for Account #2890345",
            "amount": "1257.38",
            "type": "<<defaultOTCItemType>>",
            "fundCategory": "<<defaultOTCFundCategory>>",
            "meta": {
                "extendedDescription": "value",
                "extra reporting info": "here"
            }
        }
    ],
}

The above request would create a cart to be checked out in our PaymentExpress payment portal with one item, totaling $1257.38 before fees.

For more details on Hosted In Person Cart Creation APIs including the proper URLs to send these requests to, see our detailed API reference.

Step 2: Direct the Cashier to PaymentExpress

Once you have created a cart in the PaymentExpress system to hand off for payment using the Cart Handoff API, as noted you will get a JSON response formatted like below.

{
  "cartId": "4ed4137c-3d89-44ad-92a1-c9f3e916f51e",
  "checkoutURL": "https://govhub.com/test-client/propertytax/redirect/4ed4137c-3d89-44ad-92a1-c9f3e916f51e"
}

At this point you can open a new browser window and/or redirect the cashier on your system to the URL provided in the checkoutURL field. This will direct the cashier to a PaymentExpress payment portal where the cashier will be shown the items in the cart, the total, and offer them the ability to accept payment with whatever supported tenders are enabled using the selected PIN pad or by processing an eCheck. Any fees that will result from the transaction and tender election will be made clear to the cashier as well so they can inform the customer.

When the customer is ready to make payment, the cashier will select the tender type, and if Credit or Debit Card click a button to activate the PIN pad for the customer and prompt the customer to make their payment using the PIN pad, completing the transaction.

Step 3: Reconcile the Payment

After the transaction is complete, a postback will be transmitted to the system of record, informing it of the completed payments, and allowing it to update records as necessary. Once PaymentExpress has received confirmation of the successful postback, it will prompt the cashier that the payment was successful, and return control back to the system of record.

For more information about postbacks and other reconciliation information, please see our documentation on reconciliation.