One-Off Payments

ℹ️

One-off payments are different from Akahu's enduring payment consents. One-off payments don't require account connectivity and can operate as a stand-alone payment solution.

Akahu's one-off payment service uses official open banking connections to initiate payments directly from New Zealand bank accounts.

How it works

Using one-off payments involves the following steps:

1. Create a payment: Creating a payment will give you an authorisation link with a preset amount, reference, and destination. Your app must direct the user to this link. See Making a One-off Payment.

2. User consents payment: Once a user visits the payment authorisation link they will be prompted to select their bank and give consent for the payment. After granting consent with their bank the payment will be processed and the user returned to your app via Akahu.

3. Payment becomes terminal: Payments progress through a set lifecycle, finally reaching a terminal status. Progress can be monitored via polling or webhooks. See Payment Lifecycle and Monitoring Payment Progress.

API access

Base URL

The API can be accessed at the following base URL:

https://api.payments.akahu.io/

Authentication

API credentials will be provided to access the API:

• App token (client ID)
• App secret (client secret)

Supply these credentials using HTTP Basic Authentication to access the API, using your app token as the "username", and app secret as the "password".

For example:

const appToken = "...";
const appSecret = "...";
const credential = base64Encode(`${appToken}:${appSecret}`);

const headers = {
	Authorization: `Basic ${credential}`,
};

Common use cases

Akahu one-off payment consents are used in a variety of consumer and business products. Some common use cases include:

Funding a digital wallet or investment account

One-off payments are a simple payment method for financial platform operators who receive funds from customers to fund a digital wallet or investment account. Some advantages of using one-off payments for this include:

• Simple to set up and implement.
• Exclusively uses the regulated open banking system.
• Low, predictable costs (fixed fee with no percentage component).
• Immediate confirmation of payment settlement at customer's bank.
• Error-free reconciliation (provide your own unique reference fields).

Invoice payments

Accounting software uses one-off payments as a simple way to accept invoice payments. One-off payments are a good fit for use cases like this due to the ability to pass through a unique code for bullet-proof reconciliation, and the high success rate based on customer trust in the regulated open banking system.

Checkout systems

Checkout and Point of Sale systems use one-off payments to accept payments from customers. These services benefit from low fixed costs and immediate confirmation of payment settlement at the payer's bank.