About Webhooks
Use webhooks to receive information about API events as they occur. An event is an activity that happens outside of your system, such as a card transaction at a point-of-sale (POS) terminal or a card activation. For example, when a card is used, a webhook is sent with details of the attempted transaction. To receive and process webhook-enabled events, configure a webhook endpoint in your environment.
See Webhooks for the complete endpoint reference.
See Event Types for reference documentation on the types of events that the Marqeta platform supports.
Using webhooks
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When a webhook-enabled event occurs, the Marqeta platform sends an HTTPS POST request containing information about the event to a preconfigured endpoint hosted on your system.
You must have an environment configured to listen for and process event notifications in order to take advantage of this functionality.
Webhooks are primarily used:
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For record maintenance, as the source of truth for transactional money movement.
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To understand when an event occurred (for example, when a cardholder has passed KYC verification, a user transition notification is sent).
Marqeta strongly recommends that you implement webhooks.
Note
Each program can have up to five active webhooks.
Runtime characteristics
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The Marqeta platform webhook system handles notification messages by:
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Retrying failed notification messages.
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Batching multiple notifications of the same event type in a single message.
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Including a Basic Auth (base64-encoded) header in the notification message.
Below are the run-time characteristics of the Marqeta platform’s webhook system.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Number of retry attempts |
In case of a messaging failure, the Marqeta platform attempts to resend a notification message 10 times. A messaging failure is defined as any HTTP response code other than 200. NOTE: In the case of a |
Retry interval |
An exponential backoff increases the interval between retries by powers of four after each subsequent messaging failure. In other words, the retry interval follows this pattern: 4 seconds, 16 seconds, 64 seconds, and so on, up to an interval just over 12 days. |
Maximum batch size |
The Marqeta platform reduces the number of event notification messages by batching multiple notifications of the same type and sending them together in a single message. A maximum of 10 notifications are sent per message. |
Authentication |
The Marqeta platform includes a Basic Auth (base64 encoded) header in the notification message. Your environment must be configured to perform this type of authentication. |
Event notification processing
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Your webhook endpoint might receive notifications in a different order from which the underlying events occur.
You can use the created_time field to determine the correct chronological order, if that is necessary for your business logic.
Idempotency
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Your webhook endpoint might occasionally receive the same notification more than once, such as in the case of a messaging failure. You can handle these rare cases by making your event processing idempotent so duplicate notifications do not have any additional effects. To support idempotency, each transaction is identified by a unique transaction token, and each webhook is identified by a unique event token.
Stand-in Processing webhooks
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Stand-in Processing (STIP) occurs when one party in the authorization flow is unable to complete processing within the time allocated or when specific transactional rules are set up at the card network level. In such cases, card issuers can let the card network approve transactions on their behalf. The card network will make authorization decisions as necessary and subsequently notify the Marqeta platform with information about the transactions that occurred while STIP was enabled.
STIP can occur in either of the following two scenarios:
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Authorizations that the Marqeta platform did not receive
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Authorizations that the Marqeta platform received and processed
When a transaction is processed using STIP, the Marqeta platform sends an informative event webhook that has no impact on the cardholder balance.
As shown in the example below, why the transaction was approved or declined is provided in the webhook’s standin_reason field.
This information enables you to better understand the reason behind the decision and the impact on your cardholders.
Common STIP reason codes
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Below is a list of the STIP reason codes per card network that you might encounter, the most common of which are issuer_timeout, issuer_unavailable, acquirer_issue, and suspected_fraud_transaction.
| Reason Code | Visa | Mastercard | Pulse |
|---|---|---|---|
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✓ |
✓ |
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✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
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✓ |
✓ |
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✓ |
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✓ |
Tutorial
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This tutorial walks you through how to configure your webhook endpoint to subscribe to events.
Step 1 — Configure your webhook endpoint
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Tip
Webhook configurations created by the/webhooks endpoint are functional in both the production and public/private sandbox environments.
If you want to test webhooks in your sandbox environment, configure a webhook object within the simulated transaction.
For more information, see Simulating Transactions.
Note
Webhooks URLs are cached. Changes made on your webhook endpoint can take up to one hour to be applied.Define the config object in the request body, which contains configuration information for the webhook:
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Set the
urlfield to the value of the URL of your webhook endpoint, the location to where event notifications are sent. -
Set the
basic_auth_usernameandbasic_auth_passwordfields to the value of the username and password for accessing your webhook endpoint, respectively.
The following code block shows a sample config object as it would appear in a POST request:
Step 2 — Subscribe to event notifications
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Specify the events array in the request body, which contains a comma-delimited array of strings (a single string embedded in this field is considered an array of one).
Each string represents:
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A single event type (for example,
transaction.gpa.debit). -
A group of event types, denoted by an asterisk after the base event type (for example,
transaction.*orcardtransition.*). You can only use the wildcard character with the base type events, not subcategories. For example, you cannot subscribe tocardtransition.fulfillment.*events, but you can subscribe tocardtransition.*. -
All event types, denoted by a single asterisk in the place of the event type (for example,
*).
Marqeta strongly recommends that you subscribe to all event types initially. For a list of event types the Marqeta platform supports, see Event Types.
The following code block shows a sample subscription to both a single event type and group of event types as it would appear in a POST request.
The single event type cardtransition.fulfillment.issued represents when a card is issued; the group of event types transaction.* represents any transaction event that occurs:
The following code block shows a sample subscription to all event types as it would appear in a POST request:
Step 3 — Create a webhook
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Now that your webhook endpoint has been configured to subscribe to event notifications in the request body, you can create a webhook.
Send a POST request to the /webhooks endpoint.
The following code block shows a sample request: