Clover offers different types of Ecommerce integrations to cater to various business needs. Your apps can integrate with the Ecommerce services in different ways, depending on the needs of the app and merchants who use it.

Clover Ecommerce integration types

The Ecommerce integration types from Clover are:

Payment flows and Ecommerce integration use cases

iframe and API integration

PCI burden on developers & merchants:** LOW

The iframe tokenizer lets customers provide card data securely to the Clover servers. A source, which is an encrypted card token, is provided to your app after the card is encrypted and tokenized for use with the Clover payment system. This gives your app the benefit of reduced PCI compliance burden, as well as speeding up the integration and coding process by using a pre-built component. Clover keeps the tokenizer up to date with any future API changes, so your app requires less maintenance.

Use case

Most eCommerce merchants require an app built with this type of integration. It provides the greatest business benefit and the lowest security risk for card-not-present payments through a third-party Clover app. For instance, a Clover merchant running a small retail store wants to set up an online store to expand their customer base. You can quickly build the payment aspect of the online store with an iframe and API integration.

Request flow (iframe and API)

The fields in this example request are the minimum required for each endpoint. See the Ecommerce service API for complete information.

To charge a customer's card using the iframe and API, your app completes the following flow:

1. Direct the user to the iframe in a manner consistent with your app's user flow.
2. Let the user enter and submit their card information. The Clover server returns the tokenized card as a source.
3. Create a charge request with the source and a specific amount in cents.
4. Send the charge request to the create a charge endpoint (POST /v1/charges). The card is charged for the specified amount.

API-only integration

Use Clover Ecommerce APIs for custom integrations tailored to your specific requirements. Integrate with additional services for apps requiring complete control over the payment flow.

PCI burden on developers & merchants:** HIGH

For an API-only integration, you must use the PAKMS and token APIs in addition to the SCL API, which provides access to charges and customer data. These APIs provide operations for your app to retrieve an encryption key and use that key to encrypt and tokenize card data.

Request flow (API only)

The fields in this example request are the minimum required for each endpoint. See the Ecommerce service API for complete information.

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NOTE

The PAKMS key is unique for each merchant, and these keys do not expire. The PAKMS endpoint should be called only once for each merchant when they first configure your app. Your app should store the returned key for use in each of that merchant's subsequent charge requests. See the Ecommerce - PAKMS Service API reference for more information.

Your app needs to complete the following flow to charge a customer's card using only the Ecommerce API:

1. Create an API key request containing the merchant ID merchantId and Clover App ID.
2. Send the API key request to the PAKMS key endpoint (GET /pakms/apikey).
3. Set the authorization: Bearer as your OAuth-generated auth_token. For more information, see Authenticate with OAuth—Canada and US.

curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://apisandbox.dev.clover.com/pakms/apikey' \
  --header 'accept: application/json' \
  --header 'authorization: Bearer {auth_token}'

The server returns an apiAccessKey.

3. Create a card token request with a card object and its required fields: number, exp_month, exp_year, cvv, and brand.
4. Set the apiAccessKey as the value of the apikey header and send the request to the token endpoint: POST /v1/tokens.

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://token-sandbox.dev.clover.com/v1/tokens' \
  --header 'accept: application/json' \
  --header 'apikey: {apiAccesssKey}' \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{ "card": { "number": "6011361000006668","exp_month": "12","exp_year": "2021","cvv": "123","brand": "DISCOVER"}}'

The Clover server returns the tokenized card as a source. All source tokens are alphanumeric and begin with clv_.

5. Create a charge request with the source and a specific amount in cents.
6. Send the charge request to the create a charge endpoint (POST /v1/charges). The card is charged for the specified amount.

Related topics

• Generate a card token for more information about encrypting card data and then tokenizing the encrypted data.
• Create a card token endpoint in the Ecommerce API to create a single-use token to make a payment.