Placetopay PAR

PAR is the portal where cardholders enroll their cards and manage their recurring payments (autopays) with merchants affiliated with Placetopay.

From PAR, a person links a card, authorizes a merchant to charge it periodically, reviews the charge history and cancels their autopays whenever they need to. Card tokenization and charge execution are handled by the Placetopay platform; PAR handles the cardholder experience and the configuration of each autopay.

What it solves

A merchant that charges on a recurring basis —a subscription, an installment, a monthly service— needs the customer to authorize the charge once and for that authorization to be tied to a card. An issuer that wants to offer recurring payments to its cardholders needs to bring them to that same point without asking them to type their card details again.

PAR exposes that journey as an integration: your system requests an access token, sends the cardholder to PAR with that token, and PAR guides them until the autopay is enrolled.

Who integrates

PAR recognizes each integrator as a partner with its own credentials, and offers an integration channel for each type of partner:

  • Merchants — enroll an autopay for a specific service of their customer. They use a REST API with JSON responses, check whether the enrollment was authorized and can display the autopay voucher.
  • Issuers — bring their cardholders to PAR with the cards they already know, so they can enroll autopays without typing them again. They use an API with XML messages.
  • Embedded integrations — both channels above can display PAR inside an iframe on their own site. The embedded session explains how the session is handed over to the iframe.
  • Administration — an internal API, authenticated with an access token, keeps the configuration of merchants, sites and partners in PAR up to date.

How it works, in short

  1. Your server requests a single-use access token from PAR, authenticating with your partner credentials.
  2. PAR validates the request and returns the token together with the URL where you must send the cardholder.
  3. Your site sends the cardholder to that URL with the token, in a new window or inside an iframe.
  4. The cardholder completes the enrollment in PAR: they identify themselves, choose or link their card and authorize the autopay.
  5. PAR sends the cardholder back to the URL you provided and, for merchants, your server can confirm that the enrollment was authorized.

Prerequisites

To integrate you need:

  • Partner credentials: issued by Placetopay when it registers you as a PAR partner.
  • Your own server: access tokens are requested from your backend, never from the browser, because the request carries your credentials.
  • Return addresses: the URLs where PAR will send the cardholder back when they finish or if an error occurs. If you are going to embed PAR in an iframe, your site's origin must be authorized for your partner.

How to use this documentation

The documentation is organized by integration channel. Start with the introduction and the lifecycle of a session, then go straight to your channel's section: