Payment and API integration
An integration is a bridge between your tool and an outside service: taking a payment, sending your sales to the accounts, retrieving parcel tracking. FastSolve builds that bridge, and above all what happens when it gives way.
Two tools ignoring each other
Four situations come up before almost every integration.
- Your sales are in one tool, your accounts in another, and somebody copies the same figures across every month.
- You take payment by transfer and check the bank account by hand to find out who has paid.
- A piece of software you use offers a connection, but nobody on your side knows what to do with it, so it stays unused.
- Your clients ask about their order, and you go and look it up on the carrier's website, one by one.
Each of those copies is invisible work and a source of errors. An integration does not make your tools better, it removes the person acting as the bridge between them.
Four families of integration
Most of the requests we handle fall into one of these families.
1. Taking a payment
Payment goes through an authorised provider, never through us, and card details never pass through your site. Our job is to connect that provider properly, and to handle every case: payment accepted, declined, abandoned midway, refunded.
Typical case. A trainer took payment by transfer and chased by hand. Online payment at sign-up removed the chasing and cut the time to payment to nothing.
2. Making two programs talk
This is the commonest request. A sale that creates an accounting entry, a client added on one side appearing on the other, stock updated in both directions.
Typical case. A shop copied its sales into its accounting software at month end, over two days. The transfer now happens every night, and month end comes down to a check.
3. Retrieving outside information
Parcel tracking, exchange rates, availability at a supplier, public data: information that exists elsewhere and that you look up by hand today.
Typical case. A trader checked stock at three suppliers on their respective websites. Those availabilities now appear on his own screen, next to his items.
4. Planning for the failure
This is the part people forget to price and it makes all the difference. An outside service goes down, changes its format or answers too slowly. A serious integration detects that, retries, and warns you instead of losing the information in silence.
Typical case. A company had a transfer that was failing without flagging it. Three weeks of data were missing by the time anyone noticed. The new transfer alerts on the first failure and replays the missed sends.
What an integration will not do
It links what exists. It does not repair what is badly done upstream.
- It cannot go beyond what the outside service allows. If a program does not open access to a piece of data, no integration will fetch it, and that is the first thing we check.
- It does not clean up inconsistent data. Two files naming the same client three different ways will carry on doing so, faster, unless the cause is dealt with.
- It does not live forever without upkeep. Outside services change their rules, sometimes at short notice. That is what maintenance is for, and it is planned.
- It needs input from you. You have to open the accounts with the providers concerned yourself and pass us the access: we cannot do it on your behalf. That is why this service carries a star on our home page.
The gain is in the copying removed and the errors avoided, not in the quality of the tools linked.
Frequently asked questions
Does my software allow an integration?
That is the first question, and it is settled before any quote. Many programs offer access designed for this, some reserve it for their higher tiers, a few do not open it at all. We check during scoping and tell you plainly, including when the answer is no.
How much does an integration cost?
The amount depends on the number of services to link, the quality of their documentation and the number of failure cases to handle. A one-way data send and a permanent two-way sync are in no way comparable. The price is set after scoping, once access has been verified. As a guide, excluding VAT, most integrations fall between 800 and 4,000 euros. A permanent two-way synchronisation can reach 6,000 euros.
Do card details pass through my site?
No, and that is deliberate. Payment is entrusted to an authorised provider who takes that responsibility, which spares you heavy obligations. Your site knows a payment succeeded, it never sees the card number.
Who pays the outside services' fees?
You do, directly to them. Payment commission, a subscription to an interface, a call quota: those costs are theirs and do not pass through us. We flag them during scoping so they do not appear afterwards.
What if the service changes its rules?
The integration has to be adapted, and that is foreseeable over time. Important changes are announced in advance by serious providers. A maintenance subscription covers that watch and the adaptation.
How does this differ from an automation?
An automation carries out a task according to your rules. An integration links two systems so they can exchange. The two often go together: the bridge carries the data, the automation decides what to do with it.
What if I want to open my data to other tools instead?
That is the mirror case, and it is handled the same way. We then build a custom API on your side: your partners, your mobile application or an outside provider read information there or deposit some, without reaching anything else. The scope exposed, the permissions and the call rate are settled during scoping, because they are what determines the security of the whole.
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