Hyperswitch — Open Source Composable Payments Platform

Introduction

Hyperswitch is an open-source payment orchestration layer that sits between your application and multiple payment processors. It gives engineering teams a single, unified API to route transactions across providers like Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, and dozens more, reducing vendor lock-in and improving authorization rates.

What Hyperswitch Does

• Provides a single API to connect with 50+ payment processors and methods
• Routes payments intelligently based on rules like cost, success rate, or geography
• Handles PCI DSS compliance at the infrastructure level with built-in tokenization
• Offers a no-code control center to configure connectors, rules, and analytics
• Supports retries, fallbacks, and smart routing to maximize successful transactions

Architecture Overview

Hyperswitch is built in Rust for high throughput and low latency. The core consists of a payment router, a connector integration layer, and a rules engine. Incoming payment requests hit the router, which consults the rules engine to decide which connector to use. The connector layer normalizes API differences across processors into a unified interface. A separate locker service handles card tokenization. The control center (a React dashboard) lets operators configure everything without code changes.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Deploy with Docker Compose for development or Kubernetes Helm charts for production
• Requires PostgreSQL for persistence and Redis for caching and event queues
• Configure connectors by adding API keys through the control center or via REST API
• Set routing rules using the visual rule builder or JSON-based configuration
• Enable webhooks to receive async payment status updates from processors

Key Features

• Written in Rust with sub-10ms median latency for payment routing decisions
• Smart retry engine that automatically tries fallback processors on soft declines
• Unified refund, dispute, and mandate management across all connectors
• Multi-tenant architecture suitable for platforms and marketplaces
• Comprehensive analytics dashboard with real-time payment success metrics

Comparison with Similar Tools

• Stripe — fully managed but proprietary and creates vendor lock-in; Hyperswitch is open-source and processor-agnostic
• Paypal Braintree — another proprietary gateway; Hyperswitch lets you use Braintree as one of many connectors
• Spreedly — commercial vault and orchestration service; Hyperswitch offers similar routing with self-hosting option
• Kill Bill — open-source billing platform focused on subscriptions; Hyperswitch focuses on payment routing and orchestration
• Lago — open-source usage-based billing; complementary to Hyperswitch which handles the actual payment flow

FAQ

Q: Do I need to be PCI compliant to use Hyperswitch? A: Hyperswitch handles sensitive card data through its locker service. When self-hosted with the locker, you take on PCI scope. The hosted version keeps card data out of your infrastructure entirely.

Q: Can I start with one processor and add more later? A: Yes. You can begin with a single connector and add additional processors at any time through the control center without code changes.

Q: What programming languages are supported for integration? A: Hyperswitch exposes a REST API, so any language works. Official SDKs exist for Node.js, Python, Java, and Rust.

Q: Is Hyperswitch production-ready? A: Yes. It processes payments at scale for multiple companies. The project is backed by Juspay, which handles billions of transactions annually in India.

Sources

• https://github.com/juspay/hyperswitch
• https://hyperswitch.io/docs