Glossary
Sandbox
A sandbox is a test environment where a payment flow can be run end to end without real money: the merchant integrates against test API keys, pays with test card numbers and test wallets, and receives the same statuses and webhooks as in production. Providers run their own sandboxes with scripted outcomes, approved, declined, 3-D Secure challenge, and the platform's sandbox connects to them so that a merchant sees the whole flow before a real card is ever charged.
What it must mirror
The API, the statuses, the webhooks, the error codes and the checkout, exactly; the methods and currencies the merchant will use; the timing of asynchronous confirmations, at least approximately; and the test cases that matter: a decline, a cascade, a refund, a chargeback notification, a timeout, a duplicate request.
Where it falls short
Providers’ sandboxes do not reproduce issuers’ real behaviour, approval rates or limits; some methods have no test mode at all and need small live payments; and a sandbox that drifts from production is worse than none. The first live days are run with low limits and close watching regardless of how well the sandbox behaved.
On the platform
Every Tranzify deployment has a test environment next to its live one, with providers’ test systems connected as terminals and test keys for the merchants; the same statuses, webhooks and journal apply there, and the live environment stays untouched by testing.
Updated: 2026-11-08