Announcing the BigCommerce Transactions API: A New Foundation for Payments Control & Flexibility

Today, we are excited to introduce the first phase of our new Transactions API; a modern, extensible way for merchants and developers to create and manage payment transactions directly within BigCommerce.

This release marks a major step toward giving merchants greater control over how they process post-order actions for externally-generated payments e.g. those processed via an ERP or native mobile app. Developer documentation is now live: https://developer.bigcommerce.com/docs/store-operations/payments/transactions-api 

What is the Transactions API?

The Transactions API allows developers to programmatically create authorize and purchase transactions in BigCommerce based on successful results returned from platform-supported payment providers. In other words: if an external payment succeeded with your payment provider, you can now record that success cleanly and consistently inside BigCommerce, with full visibility for downstream operations like fulfillment and customer service.

This replaces fragmented, provider-specific workarounds with a single, predictable interface that serves as the foundation for richer payment capabilities to come, including improved capabilities for third party payment app developers.

Why this matters for merchants and tech partners

1. Cleaner, more reliable order workflows

When BigCommerce has an accurate record of the underlying payment transaction, merchants benefit from:

• More consistent order statuses

• Clearer reconciliation workflows

• Better visibility for customer service teams

• Reduced dependency on gateway-specific APIs

• The ability to process post-order actions like captures, voids and refunds directly from within the BigCommerce control panel

This is particularly valuable for merchants who process payments externally, or have built heavily customized checkout implementations using their own provider integrations.

2. Simpler Integrations for Partner Development Teams

Instead of handling multiple gateway formats, developers can standardize on one transaction schema for BigCommerce. That means faster builds, fewer edge cases, and an easier path to debugging and remediating payment discrepancies.

3. A Future-Ready Platform for Payment Innovation

Phase 1 focuses on successful authorize and purchase transactions, but this API establishes the groundwork for:

• Captures

• Refunds

• Voids

• Additional verification flows

• More payment providers and instrument types

What’s available?

In this first release, developers can create:

• Authorization transactions (/v3/payments/transactions/authorizations)

• Purchase transactions (/v3/payments/transactions/purchases)

At the moment, the API supports successful transactions only.

Post-order actions (capture, void, refund) and unsuccessful or additional-action-required transactions (e.g. fraud verification) will be available in later phases. For now, captures, voids and refunds can be triggered from within the BigCommerce control panel.

Provider support

The Transactions API is launching with support for the following providers:

• Adyen (adyenv2 or adyenv3)

• Authorize.net (authorizenet)

• Braintree (braintree)

• PayPal Commerce Platform (paypalcommerce)

• Stripe (stripev3 or stripeupe)

The following core payment methods are supported:

• ACH (Adyen, Braintree, PPCP, Stripe only. Denoted as ach for all except Stripe, which currently uses us_bank_account)

• Apple Pay (applepay)

• Credit Card (credit_card)

• Google Pay (googlepay)

• iDEAL (ideal)

• PayPal (Braintree or PPCP only, paypal)

How it works

Developers POST transaction data (including order ID, payment method, provider transaction ID, payment instrument details, and optional AVS/CVV results) to BigCommerce.

These records then become the source of truth for BigCommerce’s order pipeline.

IMPORTANT: for post order actions such as refunds to be performed, the payment provider used for the original charge must also be configured in BigCommerce at the time of creation, using the same merchant credentials. This ensures the platform knows which gateway to call when capturing, voiding or refunding a transaction later.

Security & permissions

Just like other BigCommerce REST APIs, the Transactions API is secured via OAuth. Access requires the store_v2_transactions scope i.e. the same scope currently used for modifying order transactions under /v3/orders/{order_id}/transactions.

Example: creating an authorization transaction

{

 "order_id": "123",

"payment_method_id": "stripeupe.credit_card",

 "provider_transaction_id": "1234567890",

 "is_test": false,

 "status": "COMPLETE",

 "result": "AUTHORIZED",

 "payment_instrument": {

   "card": {

     "type": "CARD",

     "issuer_identification_number": "234324",

     "last4": "3535",

     "brand": "VISA",

     "expires": { "month": 12, "year": 2035 }

   }

  }

}

Simple, predictable and standardized across providers.

What’s coming next

In later phases, we are looking to introduce:

• Capture, Void, and Refund endpoints

• Support for additional providers and wallets

• Transactions that require additional verification steps

• Idempotency keys for safe retries

We’re open to feedback from merchants and tech partners; if there’s something you’d like us to consider, please reach out via support.

Start building today

The Transactions API is available now! We encourage developers to:

• Test the new endpoints

• Integrate them into existing or custom checkout flows and/or third party apps

• Provide feedback to help shape future phases

We’re building this API openly and iteratively to ensure it meets the needs of merchants, agencies, and technology partners.