What is Tonder
What Tonder is, how a payment flows end to end, and which of the four integration models fits you.
Accepting payments across Latin America usually means integrating many different methods, acquirers, and fraud rules — each with its own API, reconciliation, and maintenance. Tonder is the payments infrastructure for Latin America: a single integration covers deposits, payouts, and fraud prevention across Mexico, Colombia, and Chile.
One integration connects you to cards, SPEI bank transfers, cash vouchers (OXXO), and wallets (Mercado Pago) — with 3D Secure, fraud defense, retries, and reconciliation handled for you.
Key benefits
Connect cards, SPEI, OXXO, and Mercado Pago through one integration for deposits, payouts, and fraud prevention.
Cards, SPEI, OXXO, Cash vouchers, Mercado Pago, and more across Mexico, Colombia, and Chile.
200+ fraud signals analyzed in real time on every transaction.
AWS infrastructure with end-to-end PCI DSS Level 1 certification.
Accept payments and send payouts to your users from a single platform.
Hosted Checkout, SDKs, API Direct, and Hybrid — pick the one that fits your stack.
How a payment flows
Every integration follows the same lifecycle. You create a payment, the customer authenticates and pays, the acquirer authorizes it, and Tonder notifies you via webhook.
Create the payment
Your server tells Tonder how much to charge and who the customer is — via a hosted checkout session, an SDK call, or a direct API request.
Customer pays
The customer enters their details and, for cards, completes 3D Secure when required. Tonder routes the attempt to the best acquirer.
Authorization & result
The acquirer approves or declines. The terminal status depends on the payment method:
| Payment method | Terminal statuses |
|---|---|
| Card | Success, Declined, Failed |
| SPEI | Success, Expired, Failed |
| Withdrawals / Payouts | Pending, Processing, Declined, Success, Cancelled, Failed |
See the Payment Lifecycle for the full description of each status.
Confirmation
There are two ways to confirm a payment's result:
- Webhooks (recommended) — Tonder notifies your server with the result; it's the most popular and robust mechanism.
- Direct integration response — the response from the method you used (checkout session, SDK call, or API request) also carries the payment status.
Always confirm server-side rather than trusting a redirect.
New to payments concepts? Read the Payment Lifecycle and 3DS Lifecycle first — they explain the statuses and authentication flows every integration shares.
Choose your integration
Tonder offers four integration modes. They trade control for effort — pick the least complex one that meets your needs.
Hosted Checkout
Lowest effort. Redirect to a Tonder-hosted payment page and get paid. No PCI surface, no card fields in your app. Best for getting live fast.
SDKs
Balanced. Drop Tonder's UI components into your web or mobile app (Web JS, React Native, Flutter, Ionic). You own the look; Tonder handles the sensitive parts.
Hybrid
Recommended for most. Use SDK/Hosted for cards and API Direct for SPEI, APMs and payouts — without taking on PCI scope.
API Direct (S2S)
Full control. Call the API directly for a fully custom flow — raw card, tokenization, 3DS, SPEI and APMs. Requires handling PCI scope yourself.
| If you want to… | Use | Quickstart |
|---|---|---|
| Be live with the least code | Hosted Checkout | Hosted Checkout Quickstart |
| Keep customers in your app with your branding | SDKs | SDK Overview |
| Accept deposits and send payouts | Hybrid | Hybrid Overview |
| Build a fully custom, server-driven flow | API Direct (S2S) | Direct Quickstart |
Still unsure? The Choose your integration guide compares them in detail.
Before you build
Get access to the dashboard
Sign in to the dashboard — dashboard.tonder.io (Production) or dashboard-stage.tonder.io (Sandbox) — and add your business information. Walkthrough: Quickstart.
Grab your test API keys
Find them under Developers → API Keys. Always start in the sandbox — never use production keys for testing.
Understand environments
Sandbox and production are fully separate. Review Environments before going live.