# Concepts

## The Payment flow

The IVPAY payment flow is **asynchronous,** your customer is redirected from your website to our payment widget and selects the cryptocurrency. After the customer sends a transaction, to an address provided by IVPAY, the customer is redirected back to your website upon payment completion.

Here’s a simple flow breakdown:

1. **Customer places an order on the merchant website**: The merchant sends payment details to IVPAY via [create payment API.](https://docs.ivpay.io/start/ivpay-api/api-reference/payments#create) 
2. **Redirect to the payment page**: the customer is redirected to IVPAY to complete the payment. 
3. **Customer completes payment**: the customer selects the cryptocurrency and initiates the transaction to the provided crypto address.
4. **Redirect back**: The customer is redirected to the merchant's website on success or failure page. 
5. **Asynchronous notification**: Once the payment is confirmed or failed (can take minutes to hours), IVPAY sends a notification to the merchant [via webhooks.](https://docs.ivpay.io/start/get-started/webhooks)

This is a process that commits to always provide a final state for the payment, regardless if it's a success or a failed final.

## The Payment statuses

The possible payment statuses are:

* **CREATED** -> it has just been created
* **PENDING** -> it is waiting for crypto to be transferred
* **PAID** -> it is successfully paid (it's a final state)
* **TIMEOUT** -> the customer didn't pay within the timeframe necessary so it failed (it's a final state)