Payment Intent Lifecycle in Chargebee Checkout

This article explains how Payment Intents work in Chargebee Checkout, including their creation, authentication, capture, and expiry. It also clarifies why some payments appear in the gateway but not in Chargebee.

Related scenarios

• You see a refunded charge in your payment gateway, but no corresponding record in Chargebee.
• A customer completed payment, but the subscription or invoice was not created.
• The customer abandoned the checkout after 3D Secure (3DS) authentication.
• You want to understand when a Payment Intent is created, consumed, or expires.
• You manually captured a payment in your gateway and it did not reflect in Chargebee.

Solution

A Payment Intent represents a single payment attempt initiated after the customer submits payment details in Chargebee Checkout. It tracks the payment's progress through stages such as authentication, authorization, capture, and expiry.

Chargebee captures the payment only when the customer completes the checkout confirmation (for example, clicks Pay Now or Subscribe Now). If this final step is skipped, the payment remains authorized but not captured, and the gateway later voids or refunds it automatically.

You can view all possible Payment Intent statuses and more in this document.

Steps to understand the payment flow

1. Payment Intent creation

A Payment Intent is created once the customer submits valid payment details. Simply loading the checkout page does not create a Payment Intent.

2. 3D Secure (3DS) authentication

If the card requires 3DS authentication, the customer is redirected to the gateway's authentication page. After successful verification (such as OTP, fingerprint, or other methods), the Payment Intent moves to the authorized state, meaning the funds are reserved and ready for capture.

3. Capture in hosted pages

After authorization, the customer is redirected back to the Chargebee hosted page to confirm the payment by clicking Pay Now or Subscribe Now. At this stage, the Payment Intent is consumed, and the payment is finalized in Chargebee — either creating a subscription or marking the invoice as paid.

4. Uncaptured authorizations

If the customer does not return to the hosted page or if an error interrupts the capture:

• The Payment Intent remains in the authorized state temporarily.
• Chargebee automatically voids or reverses the authorization after a defined interval to prevent accidental charges.
• You may see a refund or release in the gateway, but Chargebee will not record a corresponding refund transaction since capture never occurred.

Additional information

• Payment Intents with statuses inited, in_progress, or authorized automatically expire after one hour if not captured.
• Manual captures directly in the gateway are possible but not recommended, as Chargebee will not record them, leading to reconciliation mismatches.
• For accuracy and consistency, always allow Chargebee to manage the capture process.