Concepts

Protection and settlement

How a protected payment is held, and the only ways it can end: released to the recipient or refunded to the buyer.

Held for one payment

When the buyer pays, the principal moves into a vault created for that payment alone. Neither your business nor Protected Pay holds it. The vault pays out only to the payment’s recipient, less the merchant settlement fee, or back to its buyer in full.

The ways a payment ends

From	To	How
`protected`	`released`	The buyer releases it early.
`protected`	`released`	The protection period ends and the payment is settled to the recipient.
`protected`	`disputed`	The buyer opens a dispute before the protection deadline.
`disputed`	`released`	The arbiter releases it, or the buyer withdraws the dispute.
`disputed`	`refunded`	The arbiter refunds it, or the recipient concedes the dispute.

released and refunded are final, and each settles the whole payment at once. There is no partial settlement.

After the protection deadline

When the protection period ends, the payment does not settle by itself: someone must submit the settlement, which can only pay the recipient. Anyone may submit it; in Protected Pay, the buyer or the recipient can do so from the payment’s page. Until then its status stays protected, and it can no longer be disputed.

Reading state

A payment’s status in the API reflects the network as of its checkedAt. Webhook events carry occurredAt, when the change happened.