An introduction to Forter's API Documentation

API Reference

Forter's APIs can be leveraged for a variety of use cases throughout the user journey. The API reference documentation includes synchronous API endpoints for real-time decisions as well as supplementary APIs used to provide Forter with subsequent status updates after Forter has provided a binary decision and/or recommendation.

The Forter API differs for every merchant account as we release new versions and tailor functionality and each merchants available data. To view your specific API schema and data requirements, log into your Forter portal account.

Security and Authentication

Forter uses Basic authentication. Provide your API key as the basic auth username value

All Forter APIs require a unique site-id in the https request header in order to validate the request source. This mechanism must be used in all backend API requests that are sent from the merchant's server to Forter.

curl -X POST "https://api.forter.com/{service}"
      -u "secret-key-value:"
      -H "api-version: 10.1"
      -H "x-forter-siteid: fortersiteID"
      -H "Content-Type: application/json"
      -d @filepost.data

Error Handling

In the event of exceptions from our API we advise merchants to retry once and afterward to capture funds and resend the API request to Forter at a later stage.

Forter uses conventional HTTP response codes to indicate the success or failure of an API request. In general, codes in the 2xx range indicate success, codes in the 4xx range indicate an error that resulted from the provided information (e.g. a required parameter was missing, bad JSON format, etc.), and codes in the 5xx range indicate an error with Forter's servers.

CodeStatus
200OK
Everything worked as expected
4XXBad Request
Often missing a required parameter
401Unauthorized
No valid API key provided - likely incorrect siteId or secret key value
404Not Found
The requested item doesn't exist
500, 502, 503, 504Server Errors
Something went wrong on Forter's end.