Transaction lifecycle

This guide provides the high-level transaction sequence used across the portal.

It is intentionally an overview. It shows how authorization, reversal, presentment, clearing, the posted transaction record, and refund relate to one another without repeating the detailed handling rules from the specialist guides.

Overview diagram

How to read this lifecycle

• the most common path starts with an authorization request and later reaches presentment and clearing
• a reversal belongs to the authorization stage and can unwind the authorization before clearing
• in deferred-authorization or offline scenarios, presentment may be the first transaction event seen by the integration
• a refund (Return) is a later credit flow and may be linked to the original transaction where that relationship is available

Guide boundaries

• use Authorization flow for real-time decisioning, advice messages, timeout behavior, and authorization-stage reversals
• use Clearing and reconciliation for presentment, posted transaction handling, deferred-authorization cases, refunds, and reconciliation logic
• use Webhook handling for delivery behavior, retries, idempotency, and webhook consumer design

The Core data model guide defines the records themselves. This guide only shows how the transaction lifecycle can move between them.