Switching to Production
Once you’ve finished testing on the Playground Environment and worked through the Go-live Checklist, you’re ready to cut your integration over to Production.
This page is the operational cutover guide — what changes, in what order, and how to confirm the switch worked.
Playground and Production are fully isolated. API keys, webhooks, and data do not cross between them. Everything in this guide has to be re-done against Production — copying from Playground will not work.
Generate Production API keys
In Production Lighthouse (note: no playground- prefix), open the Developers section and create a new API key. Do not reuse your Playground key — it is not valid in Production.
If any Playground key has ever been pasted into a chat, a logfile, or a commit, rotate it now even though you’re moving off it. Treat every key as a secret regardless of environment. See Authentication for the key types and how each is used.
Partner integrations: do the same in Bridge under Merchants > API Keys for your Production Partner API Key, and confirm your code still sends the X-Beam-Partner-ID header.
Switch the base URL
Update your code or config to point at the Production endpoint:
| Environment | Base URL |
|---|---|
| Playground | https://playground.api.beamcheckout.com |
| Production | https://api.beamcheckout.com |
If you use the Postman Collection, this is the playgroundBaseUrl variable — swap it (or create a separate Production environment) and the rest of the requests follow.
Register Production webhooks
In Production Lighthouse, set up webhooks the same way you did on Playground — see Setting up in Lighthouse for the walkthrough. The HMAC key for verifying these webhooks is different from your Playground HMAC — update your verifier to use the Production one.
Subscribe only to the events you actually need; over-subscribing can mask integration bugs. See webhook event types for the event list and webhook authentication for the signature-verification process.
Make a small live transaction
Before you turn on real traffic, exercise the full path with one real, small charge:
- Send a charge for the smallest amount your business allows.
- Confirm the response is
SUCCEEDED. - Confirm the corresponding webhook arrives at your Production endpoint and its signature verifies.
- Refund it and confirm the refund webhook fires.
If anything is off, fix it before scaling up. This single end-to-end check is the cheapest way to catch environment-configuration bugs — wrong base URL, stale keys, webhook misrouting — before customers notice.
You’re live
You can now start accepting payments from your customers with your integration.