specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: PayTabs
providerId: paytabs
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Payments
- Payment Gateway
- MENA
- Rate Limiting
- Throttling
description: >-
  PayTabs does not publish explicit numeric API rate limits (RPM/RPD) for the
  PT2 REST API. As a card acquirer, throughput is governed by risk, fraud, and
  velocity controls at the profile/merchant level rather than a public developer
  quota. Abusive or abnormal request patterns may be throttled or blocked.
  Clients should implement retries with backoff and rely on the idempotency of
  cart_id / tran_ref plus /payment/query to reconcile rather than blindly retry
  /payment/request.
notes: >-
  No public rate-limit table is documented. Values are risk-managed and
  merchant-specific; confirm any hard limits with PayTabs support during
  reconciliation.
sources:
- https://docs.paytabs.com/manuals/PT-API-Endpoints/Introduction/
- https://support.paytabs.com/
responseCodes:
  throttled: 429
limits:
- name: Request throughput
  scope: profile
  metric: requests
  limit: not publicly documented (risk/velocity managed)
  notes: Governed by fraud/velocity controls per merchant profile, not a published quota.
- name: Transaction velocity
  scope: merchant
  metric: transactions
  limit: risk-based
  notes: Unusual volume or value may trigger review, hold, or decline.
policies:
- name: Backoff Strategy
  description: Use exponential backoff with jitter; honor Retry-After on 429.
- name: Safe Retries
  description: Reconcile with POST /payment/query on the same cart_id/tran_ref before retrying a payment to avoid duplicate charges.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com