Choose your integration path 🛎️
Before you build, you need to make one decision: how much of the payment experience you want to own.
- Hosted Components SOON — Embed PAYSTRAX-hosted payment fields into your existing checkout.
- Fastest path from integration to live payments
- PAYSTRAX-hosted fields — card data never touches your servers
- Add new payment methods without changing your integration
- Direct Payment API — Build and host your own payment form using the PAYSTRAX Gateway.
- Complete control over the payment experience
- Build a fully customised payment form
- Direct access to every API response and payment event
Which should I choose?
Choose Hosted Components if you want a working multi-method checkout fast. PAYSTRAX handles the payment UI; you control the flow.
Choose Direct Payment API if you need full ownership of each payment method's experience, have specific handling requirements, or want to integrate processing into an existing payment page without rebuilding it.
Hosted Components vs Direct Comparison
In the following table you can see a more formal high-level comparison between both integration interfaces.
| Integration feature | Hosted Components | Direct Payment API |
|---|---|---|
| Integration effort | Light | High |
| Endpoint requests from your server | 1–3 | 2–5+ |
| Front-end payment form | Provided by PAYSTRAX | You build and host |
| Payment method activation | Without code changes | Requires implementation |
| Payment-method flow control | Partial | Full |
| Smart routing | Yes | Yes |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes |
| Handles card data | No — stays with PAYSTRAX | Yes — passes through your servers |
| PCI scope | SAQ A | SAQ D |