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/Credentials on File

Commerce API (2.0)

The Hellgate Commerce API provides a comprehensive payment orchestration platform designed to streamline and optimize payment processing for modern businesses. Built with flexibility and security at its core, our API enables you to process payments, manage authentications, and handle cardholder data across multiple payment processors without vendor lock-in.

Operating Models

Hellgate Commerce supports four distinct operating models to match your business needs:

  1. Primary Merchant - The standard operating model. Works great for single merchant setups.
  2. Platform - An operating model, which allows to process platform / marketplace payments.
  3. Ecosystem - An operationg model based on network tokens, which allows to facilitate transactions in e-commerce ecosystems.
  4. Managed Ecosystem - In this operating model, the management of the ecosystem is provided by Starfish as a service.

API Organization

The API is organized into logical groups:

  • Payments: Process and manage payment transactions
  • Authentications: Handle 3-D Secure authentication flows
  • Tokens: Create and manage payment tokens with network token support
  • Configuration: Manage merchants and account settings
  • Automation: Import existing tokens and generate reconciliation reports
Download OpenAPI description
openapi.json
openapi.yaml
Overview
URL

https://hellgate.io

Starfish GmbH & Co. KG

hello@starfish.team

License

Hellgate API Terms

Languages
Servers
Hellgate Sandbox

https://sandbox.hellgate.io/

Hellgate Production

https://api.hellgate.io/

Customer Initiated

These endpoints handle payment processing where the customer is actively present and authorizing the transaction.

Supports multiple payment scenarios:

  • One-off payments: Single transactions for immediate purchase
  • Initial recurring: First payment in a subscription series with customer consent
  • Initial unscheduled: First payment for card-on-file scenarios

All customer-initiated payments optionally support 3-D Secure authentication for enhanced security.

Operations

Merchant Initiated

These transactions occur without direct customer interaction at the time of payment.

Key use cases:

  • Recurring subscriptions: Automated billing for subscription services
  • Unscheduled transactions: Variable charges based on usage or consumption
  • Retry logic: Re-attempt failed payments with stored credentials

All merchant-initiated payments must reference a prior customer-initiated transaction for compliance.

Operations

Payment Modifications

Modify existing payment transactions after initial authorization. Essential for flexible payment management across all operating models.

Available modifications:

  • Capture: Finalize pre-authorized payments (for two-step payment flows)
  • Void: Cancel authorized but uncaptured transactions
  • Refund: Return funds to customers for captured payments

Modifications can be applied across multiple processors, maintaining consistency in multi-processor setups.

Operations

Payment Data

Access comprehensive payment transaction data for reporting, reconciliation, and analysis. Critical for all operating models to maintain transaction visibility.

Features:

  • Transaction history: Full audit trail of payment lifecycle
  • Multi-processor visibility: Unified view across all connected processors
  • Real-time status: Current state of payments with processor responses
  • Filtering capabilities: Search and filter by multiple criteria
Operations

Refund Data

Access detailed refund transaction data for tracking and reconciliation. Essential for customer service and financial reporting across all operating models.

Provides:

  • Refund status tracking: Monitor refund processing across processors
  • Transaction linking: Connect refunds to original payments
  • Partial refund support: Track multiple refunds against single payments
  • Processor responses: Detailed feedback from payment processors
Operations

Customer Initiated

Hellgate allows to process EMVCo 3-D Secure authentication requests as standalone request.

For example, these endpoints can be used to process payment authentication centrally and process the subsequent authorization requests conditionally on different payment processors.

The secion of customer initiated authentications consists of three use-cases:

Use-Case Description
One OffA standard situation in which a single payment amount shall undergo 3-D Secure authentication.
Initial RecurringAn authentication of the first payment in the sequence of recurring payments.
Initial InstallmentAn authentication of the first payment in the sequence of installment payments.
Operations

Merchant Initiated (3RI)

Hellgate supports requestor-initiated EMVCo 3-D Secure authentication requests as standalone transactions.

All requests in this section must be linked to a prior customer-initiated authentication.

Operations

Authentication Data

Access the results of prior authentications for reference.

Operations

Credentials on File

Manage stored payment credentials for repeat customers across all operating models. Essential for subscription services, marketplaces, and ecosystems requiring seamless repeat transactions.

Capabilities:

  • Credential storage: Securely store customer payment methods for future use
  • Cross-processor portability: Use stored credentials with any connected processor
  • Compliance management: Automatic handling of card scheme mandates
  • Customer control: Enable customers to view and manage their stored payment methods
Operations

Get credentials

Request

Get a list of credentials on file which belong to this account.

The results are grouped into pages. The caller can specify how many customers per page shall be listed (maximum is 500).

Security
APIKeyAuth
Query
limitinteger[ 1 .. 500 ]

The desired amount of records per page.

Default 50
pageinteger>= 1

The desired number of the page to return.

curl -i -X GET \
  'https://sandbox.hellgate.io/credentials?limit=50&page=1' \
  -H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE'

Responses

Success response

Bodyapplication/json
dataArray of any
paginationobject

The meta-data describing lists of data from the Hellgate API. The pages are indexed from 1 up to the total_pages.

Example: {"current_page":1,"page_size":1,"total_items":1,"total_pages":1}
Response
application/json
{
  "data": [
    { … }
  ],
  "pagination": {
    "current_page": 1,
    "page_size": 1,
    "total_items": 1,
    "total_pages": 1
  }
}

Get credential details

Request

Get the detail information about stored credentials.

Security
APIKeyAuth
Path
idstring(uuid)required

The ID of the credential

curl -i -X GET \
  'https://sandbox.hellgate.io/credentials/{id}' \
  -H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE'

Responses

Success response

Bodyapplication/json
typestringrequired

The type of the credential

Discriminator
idstring(uuid)required

The ID of the credential on file

created_atstring(date-time)required

The date-time the credential was created (following ISO 8601)

cardholder_namestringrequired

The name of the owner of the card

expiry_monthintegerrequired

The number of month in a year (e.g. April is 4)

expiry_yearintegerrequired

The year given as four digit number (e.g. 2023)

issuerobject
masked_account_numberstringrequired

The full lenght of the card number, but masked to conform to PCI/DSS requirments

Response
application/json
{
  "type": "card",
  "id": "497f6eca-6276-4993-bfeb-53cbbbba6f08",
  "created_at": "2019-08-24T14:15:22Z",
  "cardholder_name": "string",
  "expiry_month": 0,
  "expiry_year": 0,
  "issuer": {
    "account": { … },
    "identification_number": "string",
    "name": "string",
    "scheme": "string",
    "segment": "consumer"
  },
  "masked_account_number": "string"
}

Delete credentials

Request

Remove a credentials from Hellgate.

Information

Hellgate only soft-deletes data. So in case of deletion this value will be anonymized.

Security
APIKeyAuth
Path
idstring(uuid)required

The ID of the credential

curl -i -X DELETE \
  'https://sandbox.hellgate.io/credentials/{id}' \
  -H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE'

Responses

Success response (No Content)

Response
No content

Create Hellgate Tokens

Hellgate Tokens are powerful instrument to manage card holder data in a PCI/DSS compliant way.

Compliance as a Service

Achieve PCI / DSS compliance in almost no time using our certified managed compliance service.

No Acquirer Lock-In

Transparently use the cardholder data across all connected processors to implement a non lock-in acquiring setup.

Network Tokens

For every card which is tokenized on Hellgate, network-tokens can be automatically provisioned. This allows for more secure transactions, better conversion, and ultimately lower processing cost.

Operations

Token Management

All cards stored with Hellgate can be managed via the endpoints in this section.

The CVC2 security code is only kept in an ephemeral cache for a few minutes. The API allows to manage this resource with these endpoints:

  • check if the CVC2 is still availble
  • request a new session to renew the CVC2 with our SDK
  • consume the token after a successful authorization on an external processor
Operations

Compliance Service

Safely handle sensitive cardholder data while maintaining PCI DSS compliance across all operating models. Our compliance service acts as a secure proxy between your systems and payment processors.

Key features:

  • PCI DSS Level 1 certified: Reduce your compliance scope significantly
  • Data forwarding: Securely transmit cardholder data to processors without touching your systems
  • Format preservation: Maintain data formats required by different processors
Operations

Network Tokens

Hellgate supports Network Tokens with major card schemes.

The lifecycle of network tokens is automatically managed. When activated a network token is automatically provisioned and maintained through its life-cycle.

The use of Network Tokens requires prior activation by your account manager.

Operations

Merchants

Configure and manage merchant accounts based on your chosen operating model. The merchant management capabilities adapt to support all four Hellgate Commerce operating models.

The default model for single businesses. Your account operates as a standalone merchant processing its own transactions.

  • Single merchant configuration locked to your primary account
  • Cannot add sub-merchants (POST /merchants disabled)
  • Cannot delete the primary merchant (DELETE /merchants/{id} disabled)
  • Full access to all payment features for your own transactions
Operations

Processor Backup

In case your precious payment-method data is currently locked into an acquirer processor, Hellgate allows you to migrate the tokens automatically. Currently we support stripe.com, but more processors are on our list. Please ask you account manager for more information.

Detailed documentation on how to migrate your stripe payment methods can be found on the Hellgate Developer Documentation.

Operations

Reconciliation

Reconcile imported token data.

Operations
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