Getting started
Welcome to the Pandas integration guide tailored for our esteemed buy-back partners. As an innovative Trade-In as a Service (TaaS) platform, Pandas streamlines the device trade-in process, connecting partners with a vast network of customers seeking fair and competitive offers for their devices. Our mission is to foster a seamless and efficient trade-in experience, ensuring value for both our partners and customers through technology and collaboration.
This guide serves as a comprehensive resource for our buy-back partners, detailing the specifications and requirements for the APIs you need to implement to integrate smoothly with the Pandas platform. Your role is crucial in our ecosystem, providing accurate and competitive pricing for devices, and thus, it's essential that our systems communicate seamlessly.
API Integration Overview
To ensure a robust partnership and seamless data exchange, we require our buy-back partners to implement and expose several specific APIs. These APIs will allow us to retrieve up-to-date pricing information, access product catalogues, and send notifications within our trade-in process. The key APIs are:
Pricing API
Purpose: Offers pricing based on the condition or grade of a device. This API ensures that different pricing levels are available depending on the device's condition, allowing customers to be quoted fairly.
Usage Requirements:
- 🟢 Mandatory for All: This API must be implemented by all partners. It is critical for ensuring that pricing reflects the actual condition of the devices, which is fundamental to maintaining transparency and trust in the trade-in process.
- 🔗 Learn more about Pricing API 👉
Max Price API
Purpose: Provides instant price quotes for devices based on your own product catalogue. This is the initial price the customer sees, often referred to as the "up-to" price, during the start of the trade-in process.
Usage Requirements:
- 🟢 Mandatory with Online Pricing: This API must be implemented if you are using Online Pricing as it directly influences the initial customer interaction by providing the potential maximum trade-in value.
- 🟡 Optional otherwise: If Online Pricing is not part of your service offering, the implementation of this API is optional. In such cases, other pricing mechanisms may be utilized according to your specific business model and integration setup.
- 🔗 Learn more about Max Price API 🚀
Product Index / Catalogue API(s)
Purpose: Enables access to your comprehensive product catalogue, including detailed specifications segmented by brand and other relevant criteria. This API ensures that the most accurate and up-to-date information is used by our online pricing product, allowing users to select the device they want to trade-in from a list.
Usage Requirements:
- 🟢 Mandatory with Online Pricing: This API must be implemented if you are using the Online Pricing component of our platform. It is crucial for providing a detailed and accurate product catalogue from which customers can choose devices during the trade-in process.
- 🟡 Optional otherwise: If Online Pricing is not utilized, the implementation of this API is optional, depending on your specific business model and integration needs.
- 🔗 Learn more about Product Catalogue APIs 📚
Notifications / Hooks
Purpose: Allows the integration of system notifications when key events in the trade-in process occur. These notifications can trigger actions in your system, such as sending a shipping label or initiating a payment. Notifications can be configured as "blocking," where we wait for your system to respond before continuing the trade-in process, or "non-blocking," where the process continues regardless of your system's response.
Usage Requirements:
- 🟡 Optional: Implementing hooks is optional and dependent on the partner's integration strategy. Partners can choose to use these features based on their operational needs and the level of automation they wish to achieve in the trade-in process.
- 🔗 Learn more about Notifications/Hooks 🔔
Recommendations
To facilitate a smooth integration process and ensure effective communication between our systems, please adhere to the following guidelines when implementing your APIs:
- ⚙️ API Design: Design RESTful APIs with JSON payloads for ease of integration and compatibility.
- 🔒 Authentication and Security: Implement standard security practices, such as HTTPS and token-based authentication, to protect data integrity and privacy. We proxy all our front-end client requests anyway, but it's good practice to secure service-to-service communication.
- ❗ Error Handling: Design your APIs to provide meaningful error messages and status codes to aid in troubleshooting and integration efforts. Nothing will end up to the end-user, but it's important for us to understand what's going on.
- 📄 Documentation: Provide comprehensive API documentation, including endpoint descriptions, request/response examples, and error code explanations.
- 🛠️ Support & Testing: Offer support channels for integration questions and provide a sandbox environment for testing API integrations.
Getting Started
To begin the integration process, review this guide thoroughly, ensuring your API implementations meet the specifications detailed above. Following this, we recommend reaching out to our integration support team to discuss the next steps, share API documentation, and address any preliminary questions.
Support
Our team is dedicated to supporting you through the integration process. Should you have any questions or require assistance, please contact our technical support team at [email protected]. We look forward to a successful partnership.
Thank you for collaborating with Pandas. Together, we're setting a new standard for the trade-in market, making technology more accessible and sustainable for all.