Hostra for payment service providers
A PSP's hardest problem is not accepting a payment — it is knowing, at any moment and for any merchant, exactly what was captured, what was settled, what is still in flight and what the provider actually did. Hostra provides the settlement engine, ledger and operational tools behind that answer.
Processing and settlement
- Every movement is a durable settlement intent saved before the provider call, so an outage never leaves an undocumented action.
- Exactly-once execution through exclusive leases, fencing tokens and a final compare-and-set commit.
- Multi-step flows with compensation, including reversal as an explicit operation.
- Multi-rail execution: card charge, card push over Visa Direct OCT, and on-chain stablecoin payouts.
Merchant scoping
Machine-to-machine API keys are merchant-scoped and carry scopes such as settlements:read, settlements:write, settlements:reverse and audit:read. A key issued for one merchant cannot read another merchant's settlements, and a read-only integration cannot change state. Settlements can be filtered by status — pending, in_flight, retrying, succeeded, failed, reversed — which is what operations teams work from.
Reconciliation and reporting
Because balances are derived from immutable double-entry postings, a reconciliation difference always points to a specific transaction. Each settlement carries its provider reference and, where applicable, an on-chain reference, and receipts are available as PDF and JSON for succeeded operations. The audit hash-chain lets you prove that the history you reconcile against has not been altered.
Operational visibility
- Outbound webhooks signed with HMAC-SHA256, retried and dead-lettered from a transactional outbox — events are never lost and never invented.
- RFC 7807 errors, so failures can be classified in your own monitoring.
- X-Request-ID correlation from the API edge to the settlement record.
- An ISO 8583 / ISO 20022 protocol layer for teams already using those message formats.
Regulatory position
Hostra is technical infrastructure. It is not a regulated or licensed payment service provider, holds no regulatory authorisation, and does not act as your acquirer or scheme member. Licensing, merchant onboarding obligations and scheme relationships remain with the PSP.