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A payment state should say what your system knows about the money and which actions are still legal. Model money movement as explicit, validated transitions—not as status labels that unrelated API handlers update independently. Keep provider statuses at the integration boundary, preserve unknown outcomes until reconciled, and coordinate state changes with ledger effects and notifications.
What should a payment state tell you?
A state is a business statement, not merely a display label. It should answer two questions: what has happened, as far as the system can establish, and what operation may legally happen next? For example, “authorized” means approval has been obtained for a particular amount; it does not mean the funds have been captured or settled.
Separate the lifecycle of a payment from the lifecycle of related records such as an order, invoice, transfer, or ledger entry. Those records may have different owners and completion conditions. Define which component is authoritative for each decision, and make linked records react to committed payment events rather than independently guessing that a payment is complete.
The states below are a starting domain vocabulary, not a universal payment schema. Adapt it to the payment rail, provider, product, and accounting model you actually use.
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| Domain state | What it establishes | Typical next legal action |
|---|---|---|
awaiting_payment_method |
No usable payment method is attached to this attempt. | Attach or collect a method, or abandon the attempt. |
ready_to_submit |
The attempt has the required inputs and has not yet been submitted for processing. | Submit the intended authorization or payment request. |
action_required |
The provider or payment method requires a customer or operator action before processing can continue. | Complete the specified action, or let the attempt expire according to a backend rule. |
processing |
A request is underway, but its final result is not yet known. | Wait, poll, or reconcile; do not start a competing money movement. |
authorized |
Authorization is confirmed for a defined amount and currency; capture has not been confirmed. | Capture, void/cancel where supported, or follow the rail’s expiry behavior. |
captured |
Capture is confirmed. This is not, by itself, a claim that settlement or reconciliation is complete. | Track settlement separately if the product or rail requires it; handle refund or dispute as separate processes. |
outcome_unknown |
The system cannot establish whether a submitted operation took effect, for example after a timeout with no definitive response. | Query or reconcile the provider before deciding whether a retry is safe. |
canceled |
The attempt is confirmed canceled or voided under the relevant provider or rail semantics. | Start a new attempt only as a distinct, intentional operation. |
failed |
The attempt has a known unsuccessful result. Whether another attempt is permitted is a separate policy decision. | Offer a new attempt when appropriate, with a new request identity. |
Do not force every product into one flat status. Authorization, capture, cancellation or void, refund, settlement, and dispute represent different facts and may need distinct states or linked sub-processes. In particular, do not treat captured as synonymous with settled: verify what the chosen rail and provider mean by settlement, and model reconciliation according to your system’s requirements.
How do I model a payment lifecycle?
Define commands, events, and transition rules
Use named commands for requests to change the world—such as AuthorizePayment, CapturePayment, or CancelAuthorization—and record events for outcomes the system has established, such as AuthorizationConfirmed or CaptureRejected. A command expresses intent; an event records a result. A provider webhook is evidence to evaluate, not permission to edit a status column directly.
Route transitions through a domain service or equivalent single validation boundary. For each command, define accepted source states, required conditions, resulting state, and local financial effects. Reject illegal transitions explicitly instead of silently overwriting the current status. For example, a capture request should not be accepted against a payment that is merely awaiting a payment method.
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Specify the full contract of every transition
Document these items before wiring a transition to an API handler or workflow task:
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- Preconditions: accepted source states, actor permissions, amount and currency checks, and any required customer action.
- Request identity: the idempotency scope and stable identity for this logical operation.
- Money effects: holds, ledger postings, reversals, or other accounting effects, including how they relate transactionally to the state update.
- External effects: provider calls, retry policy, timeout behavior, and how an ambiguous response will be resolved.
- History: the persisted command and outcome, transition timestamp, and relevant provider identifiers.
- Communications: notifications or downstream events to emit only when the corresponding local change has committed.
Protect competing transitions with transactions, optimistic concurrency, locks, or another deliberate concurrency-control strategy. Two workers must not independently capture, cancel, or otherwise mutate the same attempt based on stale state. When a local database change needs to trigger an external notification, a transactional outbox is one useful pattern: record the outbox item in the same local transaction as the state change, then deliver it asynchronously.
Keep milestones and ownership explicit
Record timestamps for meaningful milestones—such as submission, authorization, capture, cancellation, and reconciliation—rather than relying on a single mutable updated_at value to reconstruct the story. Preserve transition history so operators can tell what the system believed, when it changed its belief, and which evidence prompted the change.
For linked records, decide which component owns completion. For instance, if an order becomes fulfillable only after a payment event meets a defined condition, make that condition explicit and have the order process consume the authoritative event. Avoid independent handlers that each decide, from partial information, that the order or payment is finished.
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Provider lifecycle labels describe that provider’s API, not a standard vocabulary for every application. Stripe describes a PaymentIntent as a guide through payment collection and recommends one per order or customer session. Its documented statuses include requires_payment_method, requires_confirmation, requires_action, processing, requires_capture, canceled, and succeeded. Treat these as integration-level facts and translate them into domain events and states that match your own business rules.
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| Provider observation | Possible domain interpretation | Important boundary |
|---|---|---|
requires_payment_method |
The attempt needs a usable payment method. | Do not assume a new attempt is authorized merely because a method was supplied. |
requires_confirmation |
The attempt is ready for the next confirmation step. | Confirmation is a provider action; your domain command should still validate its own preconditions. |
requires_action |
Customer or other required action remains incomplete. | Keep the attempt pending until the required action and subsequent outcome are established. |
processing |
The result is pending. | Do not equate an in-progress provider status with a confirmed capture. |
requires_capture |
Authorization is in place and capture remains outstanding. | Capture amount and timing depend on provider, payment method, and API behavior. |
succeeded |
A provider payment operation has succeeded under that provider’s meaning. | Map the exact operation and provider semantics; do not automatically infer settlement or internal reconciliation. |
canceled |
The provider reports the intent canceled. | Preserve the provider result and apply your domain’s cancellation rules. |
Maintain the provider status and identifiers alongside your domain state where they are useful for support and reconciliation. That gives operators the original integration evidence without making the provider’s entire lifecycle your internal contract. Payment-method behavior and API versions can affect which statuses and operations apply, so verify the current provider reference for the version you deploy.
How should authorization, capture, and settlement differ?
Authorization and capture are separate operations in flows that support them. Authorization establishes an approved amount; capture requests that the authorized amount be collected. A capture transition should validate the authorization, amount, currency, and any rail-specific restrictions. A void or cancellation is not a refund: it attempts to release or cancel an authorization rather than return an already captured payment.
Stripe’s capture API applies to an uncaptured PaymentIntent in requires_capture, and its reference says the capture amount cannot exceed the original amount. That API reference states that uncaptured PaymentIntents are canceled after a set period, seven days by default. This is provider-specific behavior, not a safe universal timeout: check current API-version and payment-method requirements before encoding a deadline.
Settlement and reconciliation deserve separate treatment where they matter to the product or rail. A successful capture response may establish a capture outcome without answering when funds settle, what fees apply, or whether a later reconciliation has matched the transaction. Define those facts from the relevant rail and provider documentation rather than assuming a generic lifecycle.
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How should I handle payment retries?
Give each logical operation a stable request identity. If a request times out, retrying the same logical request with the same identity and parameters can prevent an accidental duplicate mutation when the provider supports idempotency. A genuinely new payment attempt is a new operation and should have a new identity.
Provider idempotency is one protection layer, not a permanent deduplication database. Stripe documents that idempotency keys may be pruned after they are at least 24 hours old; reusing a key after pruning can result in a new request. Keep your own operation records for as long as your system needs duplicate suppression, and do not rely on the provider replay window to preserve your internal history.
- Persist the operation identity, parameters, provider reference, and result before considering the operation complete locally.
- On retry, ensure the request is the same logical operation and that the parameters match the original intent.
- Use a new identity only when creating a deliberately new attempt, not to escape an unresolved timeout.
- Make local ledger effects idempotent too; preventing a duplicate provider call does not by itself prevent duplicate local postings.
What happens when a payment times out?
A timeout means your caller did not obtain a definitive answer in time. It does not prove that the provider did nothing. The provider may have completed the operation while the response was lost, or it may still be processing. Represent that uncertainty—such as with outcome_unknown—instead of immediately marking the payment failed or issuing a fresh non-idempotent request.
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- Persist the unresolved operation. Record its stable request identity, parameters, start time, and any provider correlation data available.
- Check for a result. Query the provider or await its event mechanism using the original operation and relevant identifiers.
- Reconcile conflicting evidence. Compare the provider’s current state and event history with your own transition history before deciding the outcome.
- Retry only when safe. If the provider supports idempotency, retry the same logical request with its original identity and parameters while the key remains valid. If the outcome remains ambiguous, do not create a new attempt merely to make progress.
- Resolve and record. Apply a validated transition when evidence establishes success, failure, or cancellation; retain the audit trail and alert an operator when automated reconciliation cannot safely decide.
Define this path for late success after a timeout, cancellation races, duplicate callbacks, and out-of-order events. A late provider result should enter the same transition validation as any other evidence; it should not blindly overwrite a newer state. Operator corrections should also be explicit, permissioned, and auditable.
How do webhooks and reconciliation enter the state machine?
Treat a webhook, a polling result, and an operator correction as inputs to a controlled state transition. Persist enough provider event identity to detect duplicates, and make event application safe to repeat. For events that arrive out of order, evaluate whether the new evidence is compatible with the current state and provider history instead of assuming the most recently received event is the most recent business fact.
Reconciliation is the mechanism for finding and resolving gaps between your records and provider or rail evidence. It is especially important when callbacks are delayed or absent, a process crashes after an external operation, or a timeout leaves the outcome uncertain. Keep reconciliation results and corrections in the same auditable history as ordinary transitions so support teams can reconstruct the decision.
When does a workflow orchestrator help?
An orchestrator can coordinate asynchronous steps, waits, retries, and error paths, but it cannot make an external payment side effect infallible. The workflow’s retry and delivery semantics must be compatible with the idempotency and reconciliation design of each task.
| Choice | Documented characteristics | Design implication |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Step Functions Standard Workflow | AWS describes Standard Workflows as durable and auditable, with workflows that can run up to one year; execution history can be retrieved up to 90 days after completion. | Useful where long-running execution and workflow history matter, but retain business and accounting history in your own systems for the period your requirements demand. |
| AWS Step Functions Express Workflow | AWS documents Express Workflows as at-least-once. | Tasks may be delivered more than once, so make payment effects and local updates safe against duplicates. |
Choose based on duration, workload, history needs, and duplicate-effect handling—not on the assumption that orchestration guarantees exactly-once money movement. Confirm current service semantics and limits before selecting a workflow type. Whichever option you use, the domain state machine remains responsible for deciding which transitions are legal.
Quick Recap
What should you verify before implementation?
- Each state makes a precise claim about known business progress and allowed actions.
- Each transition has explicit source states, invariants, side effects, request identity, and failure handling.
- Authorization, capture, cancellation or void, refund, settlement, and dispute are not collapsed when they represent distinct facts.
- Unknown outcomes remain unresolved until provider evidence or reconciliation establishes what happened.
- Provider statuses are translated at the integration boundary rather than used as the full internal schema.
- Concurrent updates, duplicate events, late results, and operator corrections are validated and auditable.
- State changes and local financial effects are coordinated, while notifications follow committed changes.
- Provider-specific status, capture, and idempotency behavior is checked against the deployed API version and payment method.
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