A developer has introduced a new open-source tool called the Unified Payment Sandbox, designed to serve as a User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment for multiple payment gateway integrations. The project was shared on Hacker News under the title “Show HN: Unified Payment Sandbox – A UAT Env for Stripe/Razorpay Integrations.” The creator, identified by the username pranavxc, stated the motivation for building the tool was the difficulty of managing different sandboxes while working on a project with multiple payment gateway integrations.

The Unified Payment Sandbox functions as a single mock server, initially providing support for two major payment processors: Stripe and Razorpay. It allows developers to test their payment integration code without needing to create or manage real accounts for each service. The entire sandbox is packaged as a Docker container, enabling it to be run locally on a developer’s machine.

Core Features and Technical Details

According to the project’s GitHub repository, the Unified Payment Sandbox supports several key payment-related actions. Developers can use the tool to test the creation and capture of payments, the issuance of refunds, and the functionality of webhooks. The sandbox also includes a user interface, accessible locally, which allows for viewing the status of payments, refunds, and webhook events generated during testing.

The project is open-source and, as confirmed by the creator in the discussion thread, is released under the MIT license. The developer also mentioned that the tool was built over a few weekends and that there are plans to add support for more payment gateways based on community requests. Other Hacker News users suggested the inclusion of platforms like Adyen and Braintree.

Community Response and Context

The announcement on Hacker News drew comments and comparisons to other developer tools. One user noted the project’s utility for its multi-gateway support, contrasting it with tools like `localstripe` which focuses only on Stripe. The project was presented as a practical solution for a common developer pain point in the fintech integration space, providing a unified environment to streamline the testing phase.