Payvala Relay is a Partner Management API that enables financial institutions and lending organizations to connect their loan origination, repayment, and identity verification workflows with Payvala's infrastructure.

Relay provides a structured set of APIs covering the full lending lifecycle — from BVN-based identity consent and loan eligibility checks, through direct debit mandate setup, to EMI scheduling, automated deduction processing, and transaction reporting.

Organizations approved for Relay access can integrate these capabilities into their own systems, enabling end-to-end loan management operations through a single, authenticated API layer.

Lending organizations face a fragmented operational challenge: identity verification, loan eligibility assessment, mandate collection, repayment scheduling, and transaction tracking are often handled by separate systems with no common integration point.

Relay addresses this by providing a unified API surface that connects each stage of the lending lifecycle. Rather than integrating with multiple services independently, partner organizations can use Relay to handle consent-based identity verification, check loan eligibility, register direct debit mandates, trigger EMI deductions, and retrieve repayment and transaction data — all through a single authenticated integration.

Relay provides ten API operations covering the complete lending lifecycle — from identity verification and eligibility assessment to mandate registration, EMI deduction, and transaction reporting.

Relay is designed around the lifecycle of a loan — from the moment a customer's identity is verified, through eligibility assessment and mandate registration, to ongoing repayment processing and reporting.

The typical Relay integration follows a sequential flow, where each stage depends on the successful completion of the previous one. The flow below reflects the standard Relay lending lifecycle.

Relay is a web-based REST API built on standard HTTP protocols, with separate staging and production environments hosted under dedicated Relay service domains.

All Relay API operations use POST as the HTTP method and communicate over HTTPS. Request and response payloads are primarily JSON, with multipart/form-data used for the Setup Direct Debit endpoint, which requires a signed mandate document upload alongside structured JSON fields.

Relay API operations are hosted across two service domains — the identity service for BVN consent operations, and the relay service for all lending, mandate, EMI, and transaction operations.

Each service domain has a dedicated staging and production base URL. Use the staging environment for all integration development and testing. Production endpoints are used only after the integration has been validated and the production-readiness process is complete.

The staging base URLs are: https://stage-identity-service.payvala.com (Consent APIs) and https://stage-relay-service.payvala.com (Relay APIs). Production base URLs follow the same structure without the stage- prefix. Specific endpoint paths are documented in the protected API documentation available after sign-in.

Relay API access uses the authentication mechanism configured for your approved partner integration. Authentication requirements and credential details are provided as part of the partner onboarding and configuration process.

Ensure your application uses the correct credentials for the target environment. Staging and production environments use separate credentials. Do not use production credentials during integration development or testing.

For full authentication requirements applicable to your Relay integration, refer to the Security documentation and the protected credentials provided after partner access is approved.

Before requesting Relay access, ensure your organization understands the lending workflows you intend to connect with Payvala and is prepared to provide the required information during onboarding.

The exact authentication, environment, credential, and API-specific configuration requirements applicable to your integration will be confirmed during the onboarding process.

Relay integrations are developed and tested against the staging environment before moving to production. The staging environment mirrors the production API structure and uses the same request and response formats.

Use the protected API documentation available after sign-in to access the full endpoint details, required headers, request structures, and expected response formats for each Relay operation.

Before enabling your Relay integration in the production environment, ensure all required API operations have been implemented, tested, and validated against the staging environment.

Production readiness for Relay integrations includes end-to-end validation of the BVN consent flow, eligibility checks, mandate setup, EMI deduction, and any transaction or schedule retrieval operations your integration depends on.

Complete the required production-readiness process as outlined in the Developer Quickstart before switching your integration to production endpoints and credentials.