Platforms

In addition to merchants, PPRO supports an optional platform entity.

Platforms allow you to accurately represent your customer model when merchants are onboarded to your system via a commerce or software platform (e.g. Shopify, Wix).

What is a Platform?

A platform represents a software provider that enables merchants to sell online. Platforms embed payment methods into their own services and make them available to the merchants operating on the platform. From an end-consumer perspective, the interaction remains directly with the merchant, not the platform itself.

Common examples include Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, and Squarespace.

At PPRO, we commonly observe platforms integrating with PSPs that work directly with PPRO. As a result, platforms are supported as a first-class entity to accurately reflect these relationships.

Why Platforms Exist

Accurately modeling platforms provides multiple operational and commercial benefits.

1. Shared configuration and capabilities across platform merchants: Platforms enable configurations that can be consistently applied across all merchants onboarded under that platform. Currently, PPRO supports platform-specific pricing configurations, allowing merchants onboarded under a platform to receive different pricing compared to merchants onboarded directly under your configurations.

2. Clear customer representation: By modeling platforms explicitly, PPRO can better understand how merchants are distributed and operated. This improves context when reviewing merchant configurations, operational efficiency for support teams, and clarity when discussing a merchant's set up with you and your support teams.

As PPRO's capabilities evolve, additional configurations and behaviors may be introduced at the platform level. Accurately boarding platforms ensures you are positioned to adopt these capabilities without re-boarding or restructuring merchants.

Boarding Merchants Under a Platform

When boarding a merchant, you may optionally associate the merchant with a platform they have created in PPRO.

1. Platforms are created once by you using the Platforms API.
2. Merchants reference the platformId when creating merchants on the Merchant API
3. Platform-level rules are then automatically applied to those merchants.

Recommendation: You should accurately model platforms wherever an underlying platform exists. This ensures merchants can fully benefit from platform-specific pricing, configuration, and future capabilities without additional operational work.