Providers / Guides / Start here
How providers work
A provider is a software company that serves merchants and wants one place to take payments for all of them. This guide covers running that merchant base: onboarding merchants, handing out sign-up links, giving your team access, billing and the Enterprise program.
Your account
A provider account holds your merchants, your team's logins, your API key and your logo. Everything a merchant does is scoped to that merchant, and you see all of yours.
Your merchants
Create merchants yourself in the Portal or through the API, or send prospects to your own sign-up link and let them create themselves. Either way you can set each one's gateway credentials.
Your team
Invite your own staff to the Portal. They see only your merchants, and you can reset their passwords and switch them off.
Your pricing
Stay on standard PayMidWare billing, or join the Enterprise program to cover or resell your merchants' plans at your own prices.
How a provider typically starts
- Get a sandbox account and a test API key from the sandbox page.
- Build and test against the sandbox: create merchants, set test gateway credentials, send test charges. The developer guide has the details.
- Ask PayMidWare for a production provider account. It comes with a separate live key.
- Onboard your first real merchants and walk each through the go-live checklist.
Provider or merchant?
If you only run one business and take its payments, you are a merchant, and you can sign up directly. If you build software for many businesses, you are a provider. A merchant can still get its own API key from its provider, and a merchant's key only ever reaches that merchant.