Glossary
Payment journal
A payment journal is the append-only record of everything that happened to a payment: the merchant's request, the routing decision, each provider call and its answer, callbacks, status changes, refunds, chargebacks, webhooks delivered and the people who touched it. It is kept for years because disputes, audits, tax and anti-money-laundering rules reach back that far, and it must contain enough to explain any payment while never containing a full card number or a secret.
What goes in
Timestamps, references on both sides, the terminal and adapter used, the request and response as sent and received with credentials and card data masked, the classification of the answer, the rule that routed or declined, the webhook attempts and the merchant’s responses, and manual actions with the user and the reason. Payments, refunds, payouts and chargebacks each have their own entries linked by reference.
What stays out
Full card numbers, security codes, API secrets, authentication cookies and anything the journal does not need to explain the payment. Personal data of the payer is kept only as the payment requires and masked in views that do not need it.
On the platform
Tranzify writes the journal for every payment, payout and refund as the operation happens, keeps it for five years with a copy in object storage by day and reference, masks card data and credentials before writing, and builds the payment trace and the reports from it; logs are kept ten years alongside.
Updated: 2026-11-08