Guide
Payment lifecycle
A payment lifecycle is the backbone of B2B crypto payment infrastructure: it is how you automate fulfillment without pretending on-chain finality is simpler than it is.
Definitions: Payment lifecycle · Pending · Paid · Confirmed · Expired
Conceptual operational diagram for this guide. Not live merchant data or metrics.
01
What is a payment lifecycle?
It is the set of states a single payment object can occupy as your system and the rail observe payer behavior, detection rules, confirmation rules, and expiry windows.
02
Why does the lifecycle matter?
Because “paid” is not always “final for accounting.” Teams ship incidents when they collapse detection into confirmation, or when support interprets UI text differently than finance interprets ledger rules.
03
How does the lifecycle work in practice?
A typical conceptual progression is Pending → Paid → Confirmed, with Expired as a common terminal branch. Exact transitions depend on your deployment.
Webhooks communicate transitions; your consumers should verify and apply updates idempotently.
04
Common mistakes
- Treating “detected funds” as entitlement fulfillment without confirmation policy alignment.
- Encoding lifecycle rules only in UI strings instead of explicit internal state machines.
- Assuming identical semantics across every asset and network you might enable later.
05
Security considerations
Lifecycle updates should arrive through authenticated channels you control (typically signed webhooks and server-side API reads). Public payer status surfaces, if used, must not leak merchant secrets.