# Payment Flows Overview

Visual guides for choosing the right payment pattern for a use case, with sequence and decision diagrams. Organised across four tabs: Overview, One-Time Payments, Recurring and MIT, and Integration Architecture.

## What this page covers
- A decision tree for picking a payment pattern (the key question is whether the customer's card needs to be saved for future use)
- The one-time payment flow and its automatic versus manual capture options
- The customer-initiated (CIT) to merchant-initiated (MIT) journey for recurring billing
- The integration architecture showing how the SDK, your backend, Orchestration, and PSPs interact

## Key concepts
- One-time payments: customer pays once, card not saved; choose automatic or manual capture. Best for e-commerce and digital goods.
- Recurring and MIT: save the card during a CIT, then charge later without the customer present. Best for subscriptions and memberships.
- Storage options for reuse: payment method ID (simple, works across most PSPs), network token (higher auth rates and automatic card updates), and mandate reference (required in some regions such as the EU).
- MIT typically does not require 3DS since the customer is not present, provided consent was obtained during the initial CIT and credentials were stored correctly.
- Capture is controlled by `capture_method` (`automatic` or `manual`).
- Integration roles: the SDK renders the secure form and handles 3DS; your backend creates payment intents and passes the client secret; Orchestration routes to the optimal PSP, handles retries/failover, and manages stored credentials; the PSP processes the card transaction.

## Linked flows
The page links out to individual flow pages, including:

- Guest checkout — `/flows/simple-purchase`
- Pre-authorisation — `/flows/preauthorization`
- Manual capture — `/flows/manual-capture`
- Zero authorisation — `/flows/zero-auth`
- Save card (new user) — `/flows/save-card-new-user`
- Save card (returning) — `/flows/save-card-on-session`
- Recurring via mandate — `/flows/recurring-payments`
- Recurring via PM ID — `/flows/recurring-pm`
- Gateway agnostic MIT — `/flows/gateway-agnostic-mit`

## Related
- [Simple purchase flow](/flows/simple-purchase.md): the basic one-time payment
- [Payment states](/payment-states.md): the lifecycle each flow moves through
- [Customer payment methods](/customer-payment-methods.md): saving and reusing cards for MIT
- [Webhooks](/webhooks.md): asynchronous notifications used across flows

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Interactive version: https://playground.peachpayments.com/payment-flows