Payment & Checkout Integration

For products selling internationally, the work is card processing done properly: Payment Intents flows that survive a refresh, 3D Secure and SCA handled rather than bolted on, subscription and metered billing, marketplace split payments, refunds and disputes, and tax handling wired into the same ledger as the orders.

Dropping in Stripe alone loses conversion in the Gulf. Domestic debit schemes and wallets carry the volume — a Saudi buyer reaching for a mada card, a Kuwaiti buyer reaching for KNET — and an international-cards-only checkout simply turns those customers away. Choosing the gateway is part of scoping, not an afterthought: the right one depends on which countries you sell into, whether you need split payouts, and whether Arabic RTL checkout is a requirement.

Accepting payments inside Syria has become newly viable. Card networks are returning to the market and domestic payment infrastructure has launched: Paymera publicly launched in May 2026 and processed what it describes as the first card payment inside Syria in roughly fifteen years. Alongside it, wallet rails such as ShamCash already handle everyday transfers and merchant collection. This section is about the engineering — what can be integrated today, and what still needs a conversation with the provider.

What I build

The parts of a payment integration that decide whether it holds up in production rather than in a demo.

01Idempotency keys on every mutating call

Charges, refunds and payouts carry an idempotency key so a retried request after a timeout settles once, not twice. The key is derived from the order, stored with it, and reused on retry.

02Webhook signature verification and replay protection

Every inbound webhook has its signature verified against the raw request body, with a timestamp tolerance and a record of processed event ids so a replayed or duplicated delivery is a no-op.

03Currency minor units handled explicitly

Amounts are stored as integers in the currency’s minor unit, never as floats. Three-decimal Gulf currencies such as KWD, BHD and OMR, and zero-decimal or redenominated cases including SYP, are handled per currency rather than by assuming two decimal places everywhere.

04Locale-aware formatting via Intl.NumberFormat

Display formatting goes through Intl.NumberFormat with the real locale — ar-SY and ar-SA included — so numerals, currency placement and separators match what the customer expects instead of being hand-assembled.

05Gateway selection driven by the target market

The gateway is chosen from where you actually sell and which methods your customers reach for, not from whichever SDK is most familiar. For Paymera specifically, API access sits at their partner tier — so a Paymera build starts with confirming that access, and I scope it as a dependency rather than something already in hand.

01Which payment gateways do you integrate?

I integrate Stripe, PayPal, Adyen and Checkout.com for global card and wallet processing, Tap Payments, PayTabs, HyperPay, Moyasar and MyFatoorah for the GCC, and Paymera and ShamCash for Syria. Visa and Mastercard acceptance comes through whichever of those acquirers or gateways fits the target market, and Apple Pay and Google Pay are enabled on top of the same processor. The choice is made during scoping based on the countries you sell into rather than on a default.

02Can you accept payments in Syrian Pounds (SYP)?

Yes — SYP payments are possible through Syrian domestic rails, specifically Paymera for card, QR and POS acceptance and ShamCash for wallet transfers and merchant collection. ShamCash supports SYP, USD and TRY balances, so a checkout can display and settle in more than one currency. Paymera API access sits at their partner tier, so a Paymera integration begins by confirming that access with the provider before any build work is committed.

03Do you integrate mada, KNET and BENEFIT?

Yes — mada in Saudi Arabia, KNET in Kuwait and BENEFIT in Bahrain are all supported, usually through a single Gulf gateway such as Tap Payments, PayTabs or MyFatoorah that exposes all three on one API. NAPS in Qatar and SADAD for Saudi bill payment can be added the same way. These local debit schemes carry the dominant share of domestic volume in their markets, so they belong in the checkout from the start rather than as a later addition.

04Do you support Arabic RTL checkout?

Yes — checkout can be built fully right-to-left in Arabic, covering layout direction, form fields, validation messages, currency formatting and receipts. This is treated as a layout and localisation requirement rather than a translation pass, so mirrored components and logical CSS properties are used instead of flipping a finished English flow. Number and currency display goes through Intl.NumberFormat with locales such as ar-SA and ar-SY.

05Can you handle multi-currency pricing?

Yes — multi-currency pricing, display and settlement are a standard part of these builds, including mixed presentations such as SYP alongside USD. Amounts are stored as integers in each currency’s minor unit, which matters for three-decimal Gulf currencies like KWD, BHD and OMR where assuming two decimal places silently corrupts totals. Display formatting is locale-aware rather than hand-assembled.

06How long does a payment integration take?

A single-gateway checkout with webhooks and an admin view is typically a short project measured in weeks, while multi-gateway, multi-currency or marketplace split-payment work takes longer. The largest variable is usually not the code but the merchant account and provider onboarding, which sits with the payment provider and the paperwork behind it. I scope the exact timeline against your target markets on a call before committing to it.