Webhooks

In A Nutshell
In a nutshell

Webhooks allow you to set up a notification system that can be used to receive updates on certain requests made to the Paystack API.

Introduction

Generally, when you make a request to an API endpoint, you expect to get a near-immediate response. However, some requests may take a long time to process, which can lead to timeout errors. In order to prevent a timeout error, a pending response is returned. Since your records need to be updated with the final state of the request, you need to either:

  1. Make a request for an update (popularly known as polling) or,
  2. Listen to events by using a webhook URL.
Helpful Tip

We recommend that you use webhook to provide value to your customers over using callbacks or polling. With callbacks, we don't have control over what happens on the customer's end. Neither do you. Callbacks can fail if the network connection on a customer's device fails or is weak or if the device goes off after a transaction.

Polling vs Webhooks

Image showing a comparison between polling and webhooks

Polling requires making a GET request at regular intervals to get the final status of a request. For example, when a customer makes a payment for a transaction, you keep making a request for the transaction status until you get a successful transaction status.

With webhooks, the resource server, Paystack in this case, sends updates to your server when the status of your request changes. The change in status of a request is known as an event. You’ll typically listen to these events on a POST endpoint called your webhook URL.

The table below highlights some differences between polling and webhooks:

PollingWebhooks
Mode of updateManualAutomatic
Rate limitingYesNo
Impacted by scalingYesNo

Create a webhook URL

A webhook URL is simply a POST endpoint that a resource server sends updates to. The URL needs to parse a JSON request and return a 200 OK:

1// Using Express
2app.post("/my/webhook/url", function(req, res) {
3 // Retrieve the request's body
4 const event = req.body;
5 // Do something with event
6 res.send(200);
7});

When your webhook URL receives an event, it needs to parse and acknowledge the event. Acknowledging an event means returning a 200 OK in the HTTP header. Without a 200 OK in the response header, we’ll keep sending events for the next 72 hours:

  • In live mode, we’ll send webhooks every 3 minutes for the first 4 tries, then we switch to sending hourly for the next 72 hours
  • In test mode, we send webhooks hourly for the next 72 hours

Avoid long-running tasks

If you have long-running tasks in your webhook function, you should acknowledge the event before executing the long-running tasks. Long-running tasks will lead to a request timeout and an automatic error response from your server. Without a 200 OK response, we retry as described in the paragraph above.

Verify event origin

Since your webhook URL is publicly available, you need to verify that events originate from Paystack and not a bad actor. There are two ways to ensure events to your webhook URL are from Paystack:

  1. Signature validation
  2. IP whitelisting

Signature validation

Events sent from Paystack carry the x-paystack-signature header. The value of this header is a HMAC SHA512 signature of the event payload signed using your secret key. Verifying the header signature should be done before processing the event:

1const crypto = require('crypto');
2const secret = process.env.SECRET_KEY;
3// Using Express
4app.post("/my/webhook/url", function(req, res) {
5 //validate event
6 const hash = crypto.createHmac('sha512', secret).update(JSON.stringify(req.body)).digest('hex');
7 if (hash == req.headers['x-paystack-signature']) {
8 // Retrieve the request's body
9 const event = req.body;
10 // Do something with event
11 }
12 res.send(200);
13});

IP whitelisting

With this method, you only allow certain IP addresses to access your webhook URL while blocking out others. Paystack will only send webhooks from the following IP addresses:

  1. 52.31.139.75
  2. 52.49.173.169
  3. 52.214.14.220

You should whitelist these IP addresses and consider requests from other IP addresses a counterfeit.

Whitelisting is domain independent

The IP addresses listed above are applicable to both test and live environments. You can whitelist them in your staging and production environments.

Go live checklist

Now that you’ve successfully created your webhook URL, here are some ways to ensure you get a delightful experience:

  1. Add the webhook URL on your Paystack dashboard
  2. Ensure your webhook URL is publicly available (localhost URLs cannot receive events)
  3. If using .htaccess kindly remember to add the trailing / to the URL
  4. Test your webhook to ensure you’re getting the JSON body and returning a 200 OK HTTP response
  5. If your webhook function has long-running tasks, you should first acknowledge receiving the webhook by returning a 200 OK before proceeding with the long-running tasks
  6. If we don’t get a 200 OK HTTP response from your webhooks, we flagged it as a failed attempt
  7. In the live mode, failed attempts are retried every 3 minutes for the first 4 tries, then we switch to sending hourly for the next 72 hours
  8. In the test mode, failed attempts are retried hourly for the next 72 hours

Supported events

1{
2 "event": "customeridentification.failed",
3 "data": {
4 "customer_id": 82796315,
5 "customer_code": "CUS_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
6 "email": "email@email.com",
7 "identification": {
8 "country": "NG",
9 "type": "bank_account",
10 "bvn": "123*****456",
11 "account_number": "012****345",
12 "bank_code": "999991"
13 },
14 "reason": "Account number or BVN is incorrect"
15 }
16}

Types of events

Here are the events we currently raise. We would add more to this list as we hook into more actions in the future.

EventDescription
charge.dispute.createA dispute was logged against your business
charge.dispute.remindA logged dispute has not been resolved
charge.dispute.resolveA dispute has been resolved
charge.successA successful charge was made
customeridentification.failedA customer ID validation has failed
customeridentification.successA customer ID validation was successful
dedicatedaccount.assign.failedThis is sent when a DVA couldn't be created and assigned to a customer
dedicatedaccount.assign.successThis is sent when a DVA has been successfully created and assigned to a customer
invoice.createAn invoice has been created for a subscription on your account. This usually happens 3 days before the subscription is due or whenever we send the customer their first pending invoice notification
invoice.payment_failedA payment for an invoice failed
invoice.updateAn invoice has been updated. This usually means we were able to charge the customer successfully. You should inspect the invoice object returned and take necessary action
paymentrequest.pendingA payment request has been sent to a customer
paymentrequest.successA payment request has been paid for
refund.failedRefund cannot be processed. Your account will be credited with refund amount
refund.pendingRefund initiated, waiting for response from the processor.
refund.processedRefund has successfully been processed by the processor.
refund.processingRefund has been received by the processor.
subscription.createA subscription has been created
subscription.disableA subscription on your account has been disabled
subscription.expiring_cardsContains information on all subscriptions with cards that are expiring that month. Sent at the beginning of the month, to merchants using Subscriptions
subscription.not_renewA subscription on your account's status has changed to non-renewing. This means the subscription will not be charged on the next payment date
transfer.failedA transfer you attempted has failed
transfer.successA successful transfer has been completed
transfer.reversedA transfer you attempted has been reversed