Quick Start Guide for Developers

Visa Developer offers a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that can give you the ability to incorporate Visa functionality into your projects. This guide describes how to create an account, get credentials to start building your test project and how to connect to the sandbox, certification or production environment for testing your project. There's a variety of APIs that you can use to build your project. Let’s get started!

Create a Visa Developer account by clicking here. Whether you know what APIs you are interested in, or you need help picking, visiting our product overview pages, and use cases is a great way to get started. By creating an account, you will get access to a secure sandbox environment, test data and sample code to help you make your decision on what API is right for your use case, or to test to ensure the API is actually giving you the right test responses.

To request access to a restricted product, start by going to your dashboard on developer.visa.com and selecting “Add New Project.”. If the product you’re interested in has a lock icon, it means special approval is required. Click “Request Access” to open the application form.

Once you’ve completed the form, submit your request. An admin will review the request and either approve or request resubmission. If approved, you will have access to the restricted product. If a resubmission is needed, please resubmit the information for an admin to review the request again.

Create a project with the desired products. View Product Catalog for available products and Regional Availability for whether the product is available in your location. Once a project is created:

• Onboarding Dashboard: On the "Onboarding Dashboard" page on the left navigation in the project, you can:
  • Add products and APIs to your project
  • Complete the processes required before the products and APIs can be used in the production environment
• Sandbox: On the "Sandbox" page on the left navigation in the project, you can find:
  • Products and APIs in your project
  • Delete APIs
  • Credentials
  • Test data for your products and APIs
• Assets: On the "Assets" page on the left navigation in the project, you can find:
  • Documentations and assets for your products and APIs

All of our APIs require Two-Way SSL or X-Pay Token authentication. Learn what authentication code you need for your project based on the APIs you are using. We have both tips and tricks, as well as sample code to get you going with both Two-Way SSL or X-Pay Token methods. You can access the Credentials from the sidebar of  your project dashboard.

Refer to Two-Way SSL or X-Pay Token dcumentation for more details.

Visa Developer also provides the “Hello World” sample code that aims to demonstrate the connectivity with the Visa Network using the Hello World API and using the authentication method - Two-Way SSL (Mutual Authentication) and API Key – Shared Secret (X-Pay-Token).

Once you sign in with your Visa Developer credentials., you can download these sample codes from the Project Dashboard > Assets. 

Message Level Encryption provides an enhanced end-to-end security for message payload by using asymmetric encryption technique (public-key cryptography). Some of our products also require message level encryption which is a process similar to getting other credentials.

Refer to Message Level Encryption documentation for more details.

Two-way SSL (Mutual Authentication) certificates, Message Level Encryption certificates and X-pay tokens all expire periodically

• For Two-way SSL or X-Pay token certificates, go to the "Credentials" track on your project's "Onboarding Dashboard" to renew.
• For Message Level Encryption certificates, go to the "Message Level Encryption" track on the same dashboard.

Once the new credentials are generated, you will see two set of credentials in you dashboard. Each set includes certificate, user ID, and password. Be sure to use the complete set to proceed with the next steps.

Visa Developer PKI

An X.509 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is implemented by Visa for issuing and managing digital certificates to be used in conjunction with Visa products and services. This PKI consists of a hierarchy of entities called CAs that issue certificates to “Subscribers” (that is, end-entities or other CAs) within the hierarchy. The term Visa PKI is used to refer to all of the Subscribers from the root CA all the way down to the lowest level end-entity.

Refer to Visa Developer PKI for a complete list of the Visa Developer Platform public certificates used to identify Visa API endpoints.

Outbound callback configurations are required if you would like receive payloads from Visa. In order to configure the same, please follow the steps below:

1. Click page for the environment that requires the configuration from the left navigation within your project. For instance, if a configuration is needed in the sandbox environment, click "Sandbox" from the left navigation.
2. Visit the "Outbound Callback Configuration" section on the page.
3. Add a website path and domain for Visa to review.
4. Ensure your endpoint is signed by one of our Trusted Certifying Authorities.
5. Once approved, you can perform ping tests to test the payload of the configuration.
6. You can also deactivate the configuration if needed at any time via the same area in your dashboard.

Refer to Outbound Callback Configurations documentation for more details.

In order to use the products in the certification or production environment, complete the steps on the "Onboarding Dashboard" of your project. Visit Going Live for an overview of the processes to be completed before the APIs can be used in the production environment.

Hello World End Point: https://api.visa.com/vdp/helloworld

Refer to Testing Two-Way SSL Connectivity Using Postman for more details.