Introduction

The CatholicPay API lets your organisation’s own systems work with your CatholicPay account: a diocese’s finance system, a school’s fees software, a parish app or a partner’s platform.

With it you can:

• Accept payments: issue account numbers payers transfer to from any bank, start a card checkout, share payment links, ask CatholicPay members to pay from their wallet, and collect by direct debit.
• Manage payers: keep customers, verify their BVN or NIN, and give each a wallet and permanent account number their family pays into.
• Move money: see your balance and history, open wallets, transfer between them and withdraw to bank accounts under your organisation’s mandate.
• Hear about everything by signed webhooks.

Your organisation’s money is held at a licensed bank, and every naira CatholicPay moves for you is in its ledger.

How it works

Base URL	https://api.catholicpay.example/api/v1
Authentication	Your secret key as a bearer token (Authentication)
Test and live	Same addresses; a test key (cp_test_…) works in the sandbox, a live key (cp_live_…) on your real account (Test mode)
Format	JSON in and out; money as a naira string with two decimals, "5000.00"
Safety	Every request that creates or moves something takes an Idempotency-Key

Where to start

1. Read the Quick start and make your first request with a test key.
2. Build your integration against the sandbox, using the simulations to play payers and banks.
3. Go live.

Every endpoint, with its fields and real example responses, is in the API reference.