Glossary
Provider adapter
A provider adapter is the module of a payment platform that talks to one acquirer, bank or payment provider: it maps the platform's payment, refund, payout and status model onto that provider's API, signs the requests the way it requires, parses its responses and callbacks, and translates its statuses and reason codes into the platform's own. Everything above the adapter, routing, ledger, checkout, reports, sees one model; the adapter absorbs the provider's particularities.
What an adapter handles
Authentication and signing; request formats and required fields per operation; idempotency and retries on timeouts; status polling where callbacks are unreliable; the mapping of response codes to approved, soft decline and hard decline; the provider’s reference numbers for reconciliation; currency and amount formats; 3-D Secure and redirect flows; and the differences between the provider’s sandbox and production.
Why they differ
Two acquirers with the same scheme connection still differ in fields, codes, limits and flows, because their processors and their products differ. The adapter is where that knowledge lives and is tested, and a catalogue of providers is really a catalogue of adapters and their verified capabilities.
On the platform
Tranzify has an adapter per provider in the catalogue, with the operations, currencies and countries each supports recorded and the mapping of its codes to the platform’s classification; a terminal binds a client’s account to an adapter, and the journal keeps the provider’s raw request and answer, with credentials hidden, next to the platform’s interpretation.
Updated: 2026-11-08