Payments Central — Node.js Example

A minimal Express + TypeScript app that demonstrates the core Payments Central API flows: charging a card, listing transactions, issuing refunds, and creating hosted checkout sessions. Clone it, drop in your sandbox credentials, and you'll have a working demo in under two minutes.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or later
• A Payments Central sandbox account (free)

Setup

git clone <this-repo>
cd payments-central-example-nodejs

npm install

cp .env.example .env
# Open .env and fill in your API key and merchant ID

npm run dev
# → http://localhost:3000

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser. You'll see a simple page with links to each demo route.

Demo routes

Method	Route	What it does
GET	/	Home page with links to all demo routes
POST	/demo/charge	Charges $10.00 USD and returns the transaction object
GET	/demo/transactions	Lists the last 10 transactions
GET	/demo/transaction/:id	Fetches a single transaction by ID
POST	/demo/refund/:id	Refunds a transaction (full amount)
POST	/demo/checkout	Creates a checkout session and redirects to the hosted payment page
GET	/demo/success	Landing page shown after a successful checkout
GET	/demo/cancel	Landing page shown after a cancelled checkout

POST routes can be triggered with curl:

# Charge
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/demo/charge

# Refund (replace with a real transaction ID from the charge above)
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/demo/refund/txn_abc123

# Checkout session
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/demo/checkout

Project structure

src/
  types.ts    — TypeScript interfaces for all API objects
  client.ts   — PaymentsCentralClient class (thin fetch wrapper)
  server.ts   — Express app and demo route handlers

Building for production

npm run build   # compiles TypeScript to dist/
npm start       # runs the compiled output

Continuous integration

A smoke test (npm run smoke) drives the demo through the full flow — charge → list → get → refund → checkout — against a recorded mock of the core API that asserts every request matches the current contract. It needs no credentials, so it runs in CI on every push/PR (.github/workflows/ci-smoke.yml) and fails loudly if the example ever drifts from the API.

Further reading

Full API reference: https://developer.payments-central.com