Introduction to the Course

Get an overview of the course, its intended audience, and prerequisites.

We'll cover the following

If you plan to start a business, own a smaller one, or expand a bigger one, commerce and finance are essential elements. With plenty of financial services and payment gateways, deciding which service we should integrate into our business sometimes becomes challenging.

In this course, we’ll go through the Square API and the different endpoints it provides us with, such as payments, refunds, orders, and invoices. By the end of the course, we’ll be able to integrate Square APIs into our business to manage orders and payments.

What is an API?

An API is a software gateway that allows different software components to communicate with each other. It helps expose the capabilities of an application to the outer world, allowing for programmatic access to the application’s data.

Consider the case of a service like Square that provides different financial services. Building and exposing an API for this service will allow others to programmatically fetch the data this service offers, such as creating orders or managing invoices.

Many popular services like YouTube, Reddit, and Google Maps also provide APIs for extended use cases. These services allow authorized clients to access the resources provided by them.

This course is intended for every individual who wants to learn to use and integrate payment APIs. In this context, you can be:

  • A beginner who wants to learn to accept payments securely.
  • An intermediate learner who has some knowledge about different payment APIs and wants to explore the Square API.
  • A professional who has already worked with different payment APIs and wants to explore the Square API to integrate it into their next project.

Prerequisites

This course requires a basic understanding of APIs and a fundamental knowledge of the JavaScript programming language. To get the most out of this course, learners should be familiar with React and Express.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, you’ll have understood different business APIs provided by Square and will successfully be able to do the following:

  • Use Square APIs to create, retrieve, and pay for orders.
  • Create and retrieve invoices using Square APIs.
  • Use Square APIs to create, retrieve, end, and refund payments.
  • Perform the aforementioned tasks using the Square SDK.
  • Integrate Square APIs in an e-commerce web application.