A webhook notification is an event-triggered HTTP message sent by one software system to a preconfigured endpoint in another system.
Payment providers use webhooks to notify merchant systems about events such as payment detection, confirmation, settlement, expiration, refund, or payout completion. The receiving application does not need to poll the provider continuously. Production integrations normally authenticate webhook messages, handle duplicate delivery, retry failures, and make event processing idempotent because the same notification can be delivered more than once.
A webhook pushes an event notification to the receiving system. An API request is generally initiated by the application that wants to retrieve or submit information.
Webhooks allow merchant systems to react automatically to asynchronous blockchain and payment events.
A stablecoin processor can send a webhook to a merchant when an invoice reaches the required confirmation threshold.