Recurring payments

Ask a customer once to approve future debits, then charge them without a prompt each time.

A pre-approval is a customer’s standing approval for your collection account to debit them. Once they approve it, payments you request under it go through without asking them again. Use it for subscriptions, memberships and instalments.

1. Request the pre-approval

curl -X POST https://api.razpay.razonetix.com/v1/preapprovals \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RAZPAY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "external_reference": "gym-membership-sipho",
    "provider": "momo",
    "phone_number": "76123456",
    "currency": "SZL",
    "message": "Monthly gym membership",
    "validity_seconds": 31536000
  }'

The customer gets a prompt to approve it. validity_seconds is how long the approval lasts once given (here, a year).

RazPay appends a short tag such as Ref 11377CBE to your message. MTN doesn’t return your reference in its own records, so the tag is how RazPay matches the approval later, for example to cancel it.

2. Wait for approval

You get preapproval.approved, or preapproval.failed if the customer rejects it. If they don’t answer within 24 hours it becomes expired. Check it any time with GET /preapprovals/{reference}.

3. Charge under it

Collect as usual, adding preapproval_reference:

curl -X POST https://api.razpay.razonetix.com/v1/payments/collect \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RAZPAY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "external_reference": "gym-2026-11-sipho",
    "provider": "momo",
    "amount": 350.00,
    "currency": "SZL",
    "phone_number": "76123456",
    "preapproval_reference": "gym-membership-sipho"
  }'

RazPay only charges under a pre-approval that is approved, not past its expiry, and given by the same number in the same currency. Anything else is rejected before a request reaches the customer. You decide when to charge; RazPay doesn’t schedule charges for you.

Cancelling

Cancel an approved pre-approval with DELETE /preapprovals/{reference}, or from Pre-approvals in the dashboard. It’s cancelled at MTN too, and you get preapproval.cancelled.

Customers can also cancel from their phone. RazPay re-checks approved pre-approvals about once an hour, and marks one cancelled (with failure_reason: cancelled by the payer) when it’s gone. A charge under a cancelled pre-approval is rejected.

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