Single Transfers

You can transfer money in four easy steps:

1. Create a transfer recipient
2. Generate a transfer reference
3. Initiate a transfer
4. Listen for transfer status

Create a transfer recipient

A transfer recipient is a beneficiary on your integration that you can send money to. Before sending money to your customer, you need to collect their details first, then use their details to create a transfer recipient. We support different recipients in different countries:

The recipient_code from the data object is the unique identifier for a user and would be used to make transfers to that customer This code should be saved with the customer's records in your database.

Generate a transfer reference

A transfer reference is a unique identifier that lets you track, manage and reconcile each transfer request made on your integration. Transfer references allow you to prevent double crediting as you can retry a non-conclusive transfer rather than initiate a new request.

In order to take advantage of a transfer reference, you need to generate and provide it for every request. We recommend generating a v4 UUID reference of no more than 50 characters. However, here are the constraints to take note of regardless of the logic you decide to implement:

1. The reference can only contain lowercase letters (a-z), digits (0-9) and these symbols: underscore (_) and dash (_)
2. The minimum length should be 16 characters
3. The maximum length should be 50 characters
4. You can prepend or append special identifiers to the reference to further reduce the chances of collision

1{
2  "source": "balance",
3  "reason": "Bonus for the week",
4  "amount": 100000,
5  "recipient": "RCP_gd9vgag7n5lr5ix",
6  "reference": "acv_9ee55786-2323-4760-98e2-6380c9cb3f68"
7}

Initiate a transfer

To send money to a customer, you make a POST request to the Initate Transfer^API, passing the reference and recipient_code previously created.

1curl https://api.paystack.co/transfer
2-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_KEY"
3-H "Content-Type: application/json"
4-d '{ 
5  "source": "balance",
6  "amount": 100000,
7  "reference": "acv_9ee55786-2323-4760-98e2-6380c9cb3f68",
8  "recipient": "RCP_gd9vgag7n5lr5ix",
9  "reason": "Bonus for the week"
10}'
11-X POST
12

1{
2  "status": true,
3  "message": "Transfer has been queued",
4  "data": {
5    "transfersessionid": [],
6    "transfertrials": [],
7    "domain": "test",
8    "amount": 100000,
9    "currency": "NGN",
10    "reference": "acv_9ee55786-2323-4760-98e2-6380c9cb3f68",
11    "source": "balance",
12    "source_details": null,
13    "reason": "Bonus for the week",
14    "status": "success",
15    "failures": null,
16    "transfer_code": "TRF_v5tip3zx8nna9o78",
17    "titan_code": null,
18    "transferred_at": null,
19    "id": 860703114,
20    "integration": 463433,
21    "request": 1068439313,
22    "recipient": 56824902,
23    "createdAt": "2025-08-04T10:32:40.000Z",
24    "updatedAt": "2025-08-04T10:32:40.000Z"
25  }
26}

When you send this request, if there are no errors, the response comes back with a pending status, while the transfer is being processed.

Test transfers always return success, because there is no processing involved. The live transfers processing usually take between a few seconds and a few minutes. When it's done processing, a notification is sent to your webhook URL.

Verify a transfer

When a transfer is initiated, it could take a few seconds or minutes to be processed. This is why we recommend relying on webhooks for verification as opposed to polling.

Verify via webhooks

Once a transfer is processed, we send the final status of the transfer as a POST request to your webhook URL.

1{
2  "event": "transfer.success",
3  "data": {
4    "amount": 100000,
5    "createdAt": "2025-08-04T10:32:40.000Z",
6    "currency": "NGN",
7    "domain": "test",
8    "failures": null,
9    "id": 860703114,
10    "integration": {
11      "id": 463433,
12      "is_live": true,
13      "business_name": "Paystack Demo",
14      "logo_path": "https://public-files-paystack-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/integration-logos/hpyxo8n1c7du6gxup7h6.png"
15    },
16    "reason": "Bonus for the week",
17    "reference": "acv_9ee55786-2323-4760-98e2-6380c9cb3f68",
18    "source": "balance",
19    "source_details": null,
20    "status": "success",
21    "titan_code": null,
22    "transfer_code": "TRF_v5tip3zx8nna9o78",
23    "transferred_at": null,
24    "updatedAt": "2025-08-04T10:32:40.000Z",
25    "recipient": {
26      "active": true,
27      "createdAt": "2023-07-11T15:42:27.000Z",
28      "currency": "NGN",
29      "description": "",
30      "domain": "test",
31      "email": null,
32      "id": 56824902,
33      "integration": 463433,
34      "metadata": null,
35      "name": "Jekanmo Padie",
36      "recipient_code": "RCP_gd9vgag7n5lr5ix",
37      "type": "nuban",
38      "updatedAt": "2023-07-11T15:42:27.000Z",
39      "is_deleted": false,
40      "details": {
41        "authorization_code": null,
42        "account_number": "9876543210",
43        "account_name": null,
44        "bank_code": "044",
45        "bank_name": "Access Bank"
46      }
47    },
48    "session": {
49      "provider": null,
50      "id": null
51    },
52    "fee_charged": 0,
53    "gateway_response": null
54  }
55}

Verify via polling

If you prefer to use an endpoint to verify the status of the transfer, you can call the Verify Transfer^API endpoint with the transfer reference you used for the request:

1#!/bin/sh
2url="https://api.paystack.co/transfer/verify/{reference}"
3authorization="Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_KEY"
4
5curl "$url" -H "$authorization" -X GET

1{
2  "status": true,
3  "message": "Transfer retrieved",
4  "data": {
5    "amount": 100000,
6    "createdAt": "2025-08-04T09:59:19.000Z",
7    "currency": "NGN",
8    "domain": "test",
9    "failures": null,
10    "id": 860670817,
11    "integration": 463433,
12    "reason": "Bonus for the week",
13    "reference": "acv_9ee55786-2323-4760-98e2-6380c9cb3f67",
14    "source": "balance",
15    "source_details": null,
16    "status": "success",
17    "titan_code": null,
18    "transfer_code": "TRF_8opchtrhtjlfz90n",
19    "request": 1068403325,
20    "transferred_at": null,
21    "updatedAt": "2025-08-04T09:59:19.000Z",
22    "recipient": {
23      "active": true,
24      "createdAt": "2023-07-11T15:42:27.000Z",
25      "currency": "NGN",
26      "description": "",
27      "domain": "test",
28      "email": null,
29      "id": 56824902,
30      "integration": 463433,
31      "metadata": null,
32      "name": "Jekanmo Padie",
33      "recipient_code": "RCP_gd9vgag7n5lr5ix",
34      "type": "nuban",
35      "updatedAt": "2023-07-11T15:42:27.000Z",
36      "is_deleted": false,
37      "isDeleted": false,
38      "details": {
39        "authorization_code": null,
40        "account_number": "9876543210",
41        "account_name": null,
42        "bank_code": "044",
43        "bank_name": "Access Bank"
44      }
45    },
46    "session": {
47      "provider": null,
48      "id": null
49    },
50    "fee_charged": 1000,
51    "fees_breakdown": null,
52    "gateway_response": null
53  }
54}