menu

Payment API

What's on this page

General / Using Your API Key

What is an API Key?

In the CCV Online Payments system, every merchant that wants to make payments needs to submit API requests which are authenticated with a Authorization header for each request using Basic Authorization. This standard header consists of username and password.

When you sign up with CCV Online Payments, you will receive your own API key.

You can use the API key to generate the Authorization header, by setting the apikey as the username of the header and leaving the password of the header blank or empty.

An example of a TEST API key: t_e40a9b36f4c1fa31f512c623bb5a315696e98cea

Note:

  • This API key is not valid and cannot be used to perform tests with; you must use the keys we will provide.

Operating Mode

We support both a test operating mode and a live operating mode on all CCV Online Payments environments. An API key can only be used for 1 operating mode, not both. To identify the operating mode of a key, check the prefix: l_ for live and t_ for test.

Test Mode

In this mode, all payment requests will be simulated by our own test simulators. This allows for some specific test scenario’s to be tested. No real payments are made in this mode.

For instance:

  • A card payment will not be processed by the acquirer but by our own acquirer simulators.
  • An iDEAL payment will be handled by a simulated acquirer.
  • A PayPal payment will be handled by our simulated paypal server.
  • A token will be a simulated token that is NOT PCI compliant

Live Mode

In this mode, all payment requests will be sent towards the external systems / acquirers. This will trigger real payments on the production environment.

For instance:

  • A card payment will be processed by an acquirer.
  • An iDEAL payment will be handled by the iDEAL system.
  • A PayPal payment will be handled by the Paypal system.
  • A token will be a generated token that is PCI compliant.

note: When using a live key on our test environment, the payment requests will be sent to sandbox environments of the chosen payment method if available, if not it will be sent to our simulators.

Examples

In the code snippets below, you can find multiple examples on how to use your API key with different technologies.

cURL

Using the API Key t_e40a9b36f4c1fa31f512c623bb5a315696e98cea we can do the following cURL command to successfully authenticate an API request.

curl --basic --user t_e40a9b36f4c1fa31f512c623bb5a315696e98cea: https://api.psp.ccv.eu/api/v1/method

Note the : at the end of the API key, to indicate the password is blank.

Java

Using the API Key t_e40a9b36f4c1fa31f512c623bb5a315696e98cea we can do the following Java Code to successfully authenticate an API request.

URL url = new URL("https://api.psp.ccv.eu/api/v1/method");
HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
String auth = "t_e40a9b36f4c1fa31f512c623bb5a315696e98cea" + ":" + ""; // our Auth Header has a blank password
byte[] encodedAuth = Base64.encodeBase64(auth.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
String authHeaderValue = "Basic " + new String(encodedAuth);
connection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", authHeaderValue);
int responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();