Transactions are records of purchases, transfers, payments, or manual adjustments. The registry of most transactions is triggered by cleared authorizations. This is the final step of a financial operation in the Pismo platform.

Transactions journey

The following figure shows how financial operations become authorizations and then transactions in the Pismo platform.

1030 — **The journey leading towards a transaction**

The following shows each stage of this journey:

❶ A financial operation is any operation that triggers a money movement on customer account, such as:

Withdrawal
Purchase
Payment
Cash-in
Transfer

❷ The authorization step verifies:

If the operation is allowed.
If the checking card is valid.
If limits are available.
If there is fraudulent activity.

This step should take milliseconds. If authorization succeeds, this updates the customer timeline and impacts the credit limit (if related to a credit program) or the account balance (if related to a debit or pre-paid program).

❸ The confirmation step is not always necessary. This step is common for credit operations that require a dual message confirmation model.

❹ When there's a response to a confirmation (when required), an authorization (e.g., debit operations) generates a number of transactions. An adjustment made by the issuer (e.g., non-event authorizations) can also create a transaction. Transactions represent the final amount of operations (e.g., installments, fees, and interests) and impact bank account and customer final statements for credit cards.

Authorizations vs. transactions

Before you can have a transaction, you should have an authorization, which allows the transaction to occur. The authorization impacts the account's available limit. Sometimes, before you change an authorization into a transaction, you need a confirmation. This happens when you do a network transaction. A confirmation verifies you're authorizing the transaction. The transaction is making the purchase, payment, or transfer itself. This impacts the account (or bank) statement.

To see the difference between the two, here's an example. Let's say you want to purchase some coffee. Before you purchase the coffee, you must open your wallet and get the method of payment you want to use. This is making an authorization. You then hand your method of payment to the seller to purchase the coffee. This is making a transaction.

How you handle authorizations and transactions depends on the Card network integration model you choose.

Transaction types

The Pismo platform can handle different types of financial operations and transactions. They are:

To find a transaction type, see List transactions types. For information on how you can create transaction types, see Create transaction type.

Anatomy of a transaction

If you need details on what made up a certain transaction, you can find this out on the Pismo platform. You can also find out the metadata about a transaction. To do this, see Get transaction.

What's next

So, how do transactions work in the Pismo platform? Well, there's a way to see this in the Get transaction details page.