A merchant in Preczn represents a business that processes payments through your platform. Merchant records store business information, processor credentials, and connection statuses—everything needed to route transactions and manage the merchant relationship.

What's in a Merchant Record

Data	Description
Business Information	Name, address, contact details, business type
Identifiers	Preczn merchant ID (`mid_`), your external ID
Connections	Processor relationships with credentials and status
Plan Assignment	Which routing plan applies to this merchant
Status	Active/disabled, test mode/live mode

Working with Merchants

Creating Merchants

Add merchants to your platform individually or in bulk:

Via Dashboard — Manual entry through Merchant Vault
Via API — Programmatic creation with the Merchant API
CSV Import — Bulk upload for migrations
Import from Connection — Pull existing merchants from a processor

See Creating Merchants for details.

Processor Connections

Connect merchants to payment processors to enable transaction processing:

Onboarding to Connections — Board new merchants through Preczn
Linking Existing Credentials — Connect merchants already boarded outside Preczn
Connection Statuses — Understand connection states and transitions

Managing Merchants

Once merchants are created and connected:

Enabling Merchants — Control when merchants can process payments
Labeling Merchants — Organize merchants with custom labels
Merchant Lifecycle — Understand the journey from creation to processing

Merchant Vault

The Merchant Vault in the Dashboard provides a central view of all your merchants. From here you can:

View and filter merchants by status, connection, plan, or label
Access individual merchant details and transaction history
Manage connections and credentials
Enable or disable merchants
Switch between test mode and live mode views

Test Mode vs Live Mode

Merchants exist separately in test mode and live mode:

Test mode — Use sandbox credentials to validate your integration without processing real payments
Live mode — Production merchants processing real transactions

Create and test merchants in test mode before replicating your setup in live mode. API keys are mode-specific, so test mode keys only access test mode merchants.

API Access

The Merchant API provides programmatic access to:

Create, update, and retrieve merchants
Manage processor connections and credentials
Trigger onboarding workflows
Query merchant lists with filtering and pagination

All API operations require authentication with a platform API key.