What is kadosei?

kadosei is a payment orchestration platform. You integrate once, and gain access to multiple payment providers, payment methods, and intelligent routing, without managing separate PSP contracts or building individual provider integrations.

When a customer checks out, kadosei determines the best provider to process the transaction based on success rate, cost, and availability, then routes the payment accordingly. Your integration stays the same regardless of which provider handles it.

How kadosei fits into your stack

kadosei sits between your application and your payment providers.

Your application → kadosei API → Payment Provider

Your server calls the kadosei API to initiate payments. kadosei handles provider selection, session creation with the chosen provider, and confirmation back to your server via webhook. Card data and funds never pass through kadosei and your customers transact directly with the provider's hosted payment page.

This architecture means:

  • No PCI DSS scope beyond SAQ A for eCommerce integrations

  • No direct PSP contracts required

  • A single integration that works across all providers kadosei supports

Core Concepts

Merchant

Your organisation on kadosei. A merchant account is created during onboarding and scopes all your configuration, applications, and transaction data.

Application

A logical grouping within your merchant account, typically representing one integration (for example, your production web store or your staging environment). API keys belong to applications. You can have multiple applications under one merchant.

API Key

A credential scoped to an application, used to authenticate payment API calls. Production API keys are prefixed ks_live_ and Sandbox keys are prefixed ks_test_ . The full key is shown only once at creation so store it securely.

Payment Session

A single checkout attempt. When a customer selects a payment method, your server creates a session with kadosei and receives a checkout URL to redirect the customer to. The session tracks the payment through to completion.

Intelligent Routing

When a payment method can be processed by more than one provider, kadosei's routing engine selects the best one automatically. You do not specify a provider; kadosei decides based on real-time performance data. Routing is invisible to your integration and to your customers.

Webhook

A server-to-server notification sent to your endpoint when payment status changes. Webhooks are the authoritative confirmation signal so as not to rely solely on browser redirects to confirm payment.

Authentication Model

kadosei uses two separate authentication mechanisms depending on what you are doing.

JWT (management operations) Used for account management via the kadosei API for creating applications, generating API keys, and configuring your account. You obtain a JWT by calling POST /api/v1/auth/login with your credentials. JWTs expire and must be refreshed.

API key (payment operations) Used to authenticate payment API calls from your server. API keys are long-lived and scoped to an application. You generate them via the management API or the kadosei dashboard.

Most developers only interact with the management API during initial setup. Day-to-day, your server authenticates payment calls with an API key.

API base URL

https://api.kadosei.com/v1

All requests must be made over HTTPS. HTTP requests will be rejected.

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