Simplify Payment Processing on Your React App with Paystack Integration in 3 mins

React is a popular JavaScript library used to build user interfaces. One common requirement for many React apps is the ability to process payments. Fortunately, there are many payment gateway options available for React apps, and one of the most popular is Paystack. In this article, we will explore how to simplify payment processing on your React app with Paystack integration.

Prerequisites 🎯

• Have an active paystack account, or create one at paystack.com

• Have basic knowledge of React js

Setting up Paystack 🎯

The first step to using Paystack in your React app is setting up a Paystack account. To create an account, visit Paystack's website and follow the signup instructions. After signing up, you will need to generate an API key that can be used to communicate with the Paystack API. To generate an API key, log into your Paystack dashboard, click on the settings, and go to the API Keys section. There are two API keys, one for test mode and one for live mode. Copy the test API key and save it in a safe place as you will need it later. 

Integrating Paystack with React 🎯

There are several ways to integrate Paystack with a React app, but the easiest is to use the Paystack React library. To install the library, open a terminal window and navigate to your React app directory. Run the following command:

npm install react-paystack

Once the installation is complete, we can import the library into your React app as follows:

import PaystackButton from 'react-paystack';

With the Paystack React library installed and imported, we can now create a payment form that users can use to make payments. The PaystackButton component takes several props, including the amount to charge, the email of the user making the payment, and the Paystack test API key. The props and their purpose will be explained in a moment. For now, we'll add them and hardcode the public key and product quantity as they don't change*.*  Here is an example of a basic payment form:

<PaystackButton
  text="Make Payment"
  email="user@example.com"
  amount={1000000}
  publicKey="pk_test_1234567890123456789012345"
  onSuccess: () =>{
    return alert("Thanks for doing business with us! Come back soon!!")
    },
  onClose: () => alert("Wait! You need this oil, don't go!!!!"),

/>

In this example, the text prop sets the text that appears on the payment button, the email prop sets the email address of the user making the payment, the amount prop sets the amount to charge in kobo (1000000 kobo is equivalent to 10,000 naira), the publicKey prop sets the Paystack test API key, the onSuccess props take a function after a successful transaction completes, and the onClose props take a function that executes when the user closes Paystack Checkout

Handling Payments 🎯

After the user submits the payment form, the Paystack API will process the payment and return a transaction reference. You can use this reference to verify the payment and perform other actions, such as updating the user's account or sending a confirmation email.

To handle payments, you will need to create a server-side endpoint that receives the transaction reference and verifies the payment. Paystack provides detailed documentation on how to do this for several programming languages, including Node.js and PHP. Once you have verified the payment, you can update your database or perform other actions as necessary.

Conclusion 😊🤗

Payment processing is a frequently used feature in apps.

There are different payment gateways to integrate your app but one the most popular is paystack which is very easy to integrate into our apps as seen above.

Hope you have learned a lot from this article 😊😊

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Resources

Paystack documentation

React Js documentation