From sandbox to live: testing a payment integration safely

Payment bugs are expensive because they involve real customers and real money. The cheapest place to find them is a sandbox. MariPay gives every business a sandbox from day one: a separate test mode, test API keys and a built-in simulator that never moves real money.

Test and live are separate worlds

Test data and live data never mix. A sk_test_ key can only touch test data, and a sk_live_ key only live data. The dashboard has a TEST and LIVE toggle, with its own balances, payments and settlements in each. Nothing you do in test can affect a real customer.

What to test

Testing the happy path is not enough. Real customers decline prompts, run out of balance and close the page halfway. Use the test simulator to reproduce each case by approving, declining or leaving a payment pending:

• A payment that completes, and your order being marked paid exactly once.
• A declined payment, and a clear message so the customer can try again.
• A payment that stays pending, and your site showing a sensible waiting state.
• Insufficient funds, and a provider outage, and how your retries behave.
• A webhook delivered twice, and your handler staying correct.
• A refund, and your records after it.

Check the unglamorous parts

• Are secret keys read from the environment and absent from your repository and your front end?
• Do you verify webhook signatures against the raw body?
• Does every payment write send an Idempotency-Key?
• Are amounts integers in minor units with an explicit currency?

How going live works

Live mode is switched on by verification, not by a setting you flip. You submit your business details and documents once, and our team reviews them. Until that is approved, live payments, live API keys, payouts and settlements stay locked, while sandbox keeps working. Verification is done once per person and covers every business you create.

When it is approved, live mode unlocks. Your code does not change: you swap the sk_test_ key for an sk_live_ key and keep the same endpoints, webhooks and logic.

Your first live payment

Start small. Make a real payment of a modest amount from your own phone, confirm the webhook arrives and the order updates, then check that it appears in your live dashboard and balance. After that you are ready for customers.