Introduction

Wajub is a payment orchestration platform designed for Africa. Instead of integrating each Mobile Money operator, bank or aggregator separately, you integrate a single API — Wajub routes each transaction to the best available provider, handles failures and exposes standardized webhooks.

Before you start — prerequisites

To follow any example on this site you need:

1. A Wajub account — create one for free at dashboard.wajub.com.
2. Your API keys — once logged in, open Developers → API Keys. You will see two sets: pk_test.… / sk_test.… for sandbox (no real money) and pk.… / sk.… for production.
3. An HTTP client — curl, or a server SDK (Node.js, Python, PHP, Go, Ruby, Java, C#).

See Setup your account for a step-by-step walkthrough of the Dashboard.

What you can build

• Collect payments via Mobile Money (MTN MoMo, Orange Money, Wave, Airtel), card and bank transfer.
• Pay out funds to Mobile Money wallets via the Transfers API or manage Beneficiaries.
• Embed checkout directly in your app with Wajub Components — React, Vue, Svelte or vanilla JS.
• Orchestrate your providers intelligently with routing and fallback (Orchestration).

A note on "Payment" vs "Transaction"

You will see both words throughout this documentation — they refer to the same object. When you call POST /payments, the API response wraps the result under a "transaction" key and the id is prefixed trx_. This is intentional: "payment" is the business concept; "transaction" is what the API serializes. See Key Concepts → "Payment" vs "transaction" for the full explanation.

How the API works

The Wajub API is organized around REST. It uses predictable URLs, accepts JSON-encoded request bodies, returns JSON responses and relies on standard HTTP codes.

All requests go through a single base URL:

https://api.wajub.com

First call

Use your public key (pk_test.… in sandbox) for client-side calls like payment initialization. Use your private key (sk_test.…) for server-side operations (transfers, refunds, balance). Never expose a private key in a browser or mobile app. The examples below use a placeholder key — replace it with your own from Developers → API Keys in the Dashboard.

curl https://api.wajub.com/payments \
-H "Authorization: pk_test.8f2b91c4d7e6a0f3" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
  "amount": 25000,
  "currency": "XAF",
  "customer": { "email": "amina@example.com" },
  "description": "Order #4172"
}'

{
"status": "Created",
"message": "Payment initialized",
"code": 201,
"transaction": {
  "id": "trx_01JXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
  "status": "pending",
  "amount": 25000,
  "currency": "XAF",
  "sandbox": true
},
"authorization_url": "https://pay.wajub.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
}

Key concepts

What's next?

Just getting started

• Quickstart — process a first payment in 5 minutes.
• SDK Quickstart — install the SDK for your language (Node.js, Python, PHP, Go).
• Key Concepts — payment lifecycle, sandbox vs live, session tokens.
• Environments & API keys — test vs production.

Ready to build

• Guides & Tutorials — step-by-step integrations for every use case.
• Payment methods & channels — full country × operator coverage.
• API Reference — every endpoint with request/response examples.

Going deeper

• Best Practices — idempotency, error handling, security.
• Going Live — production checklist and KYC.
• All SDKs & Libraries — Node.js, Python, PHP, Go, mobile, and browser SDKs.