Cash

Cash is a supported tender type in the Checkout API. It doesn’t move money through a processor, but it lets merchants record cash payments in PCE so that reports and balances reflect all the ways customers pay in-store.

Prerequisites and limitations

• Prerequisites: Access to the PCE /payment API and a merchant account configured for Checkout.
• Limitations: Cash transactions are for reporting and reconciliation only. PCE does not deposit cash into the merchant’s bank account — the merchant must handle the physical cash and bank deposits manually.

When to Use Cash Payments

Cash tender is useful when:

• Merchants want to offer additional payment methods, including cash, alongside cards and ACH.
• The business wants a single view of all tender types in reports (for example, card, ACH, cash) for end-of-day reconciliation.
• Staff are taking in-person payments and need to log cash sales in the same POS or virtual terminal workflow as card payments.

Even if most customers pay with cards, having a Cash tender type available ensures the merchant can capture all payment types cleanly in PCE.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Reporting-only tender: Cash payments recorded via the API don’t trigger any settlement. The merchant must physically deposit the cash to their bank.
• Cleaner reconciliation: Using Cash tender in PCE helps keep totals aligned between drawer counts, PCE reports, and accounting records.
• Simple payload: Cash payments don’t require card or bank details — just core fields like merchantId, tenderType, and amount.

Make a Cash Payment Request

Cash transactions are created by posting to the /payment endpoint with tenderType set to "Cash".

Endpoint

Steps

1. Set up the HTTP request

   • Use the POST method.
   • Call the /payment endpoint in the appropriate environment (sandbox or production).

2. Add authentication and headers

   • Send your username and password in the Authorization header using Basic auth.

     • Encode username:password as Base-64 and prefix with Basic .

   • Set the Content-Type header to application/json.

3. Send a cash payment payload

   Use a minimal JSON body like this:

   JSON

   {
     "merchantId": "4xxx0",
     "tenderType": "Cash",
     "amount": "0.01"
   }

   • merchantId: Your merchant identifier.
   • tenderType: Set to "Cash".
   • amount: The cash amount collected from the customer.

4. Verify the response

   • A successful cash transaction returns HTTP 201 Created.
   • The payment object’s status field should be Approved when the record is created successfully.