POPFAB API Documentation
POPFAB is a payment orchestration platform that unifies Africa's fragmented payment ecosystem into a single, intelligent API. Route payments across multiple providers, recover from failures automatically, and gain full visibility into your payment operations.
Quick Start
Make your first payment in under 5 minutes.
Authentication
Learn how API keys and environments work.
Payments API
Initiate, query, and refund payments.
Webhooks
Receive real-time payment events.
What is POPFAB?
POPFAB sits between your application and Africa's payment providers. Instead of integrating with each provider individually, you send a single API request and POPFAB selects the best provider in real time, handles retries, and falls over to an alternative if the primary provider fails — all transparently.
// Your app sends one request
POST https://api.popfab.io/v1/payments
// POPFAB handles the rest
┌─ Route to Paystack (cost: ₦150, success: 97%)
├─ Paystack → timeout after 3s
└─ Failover → Flutterwave → ✓ success in 420ms
Key Concepts
Payment Orchestration
POPFAB does not process payments itself. It routes your payment requests to the right provider and manages the entire lifecycle — retries, failover, status tracking.
Idempotency
Every payment request must include an Idempotency-Key header. This prevents duplicate charges if you retry a request. The same key returns the same result.
Routing Rules
Define conditions (by amount, currency, payment method, or country) to control which provider handles each transaction. Rules are evaluated in priority order.
Circuit Breaker
POPFAB monitors each provider's health. If a provider's failure rate exceeds 30% in a 60-second window, traffic is automatically shifted away until the provider recovers.
Environments
Sandbox keys (sk_test_...) route to a simulated provider environment so you can test without moving real money. Live keys (sk_live_...) hit production providers.
Supported Providers
| Provider | Payment Methods | Markets | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paystack | Card, Bank Transfer, USSD, QR | NG, GH, KE, ZA | Live |
| Flutterwave | Card, Mobile Money, Bank Transfer, USSD | NG + 30 markets | Live |
| Monnify | Bank Transfer, Card | NG | Live |
| Squad | Card, Bank Transfer, USSD | NG | Coming soon |
| Interswitch | Card, USSD | NG | Coming soon |
| Payaza | Card, Bank Transfer | NG, GH | Planned |
Base URL
https://api.popfab.io/v1. Sandbox requests use the same base URL — the environment is determined by your API key prefix.