Stay up to date

The GOV.UK Pay API follows the Central Digital and Data Office’s API data and technical standards. Our API updates are backwards compatible wherever possible to prevent disruption to your services. Where backwards compatible changes are not possible, we check with services to minimise disruption.

We follow the Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 system.

The number in the URL reflects the major version number. For example /v1/payments/.

Our OpenAPI file has the full MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH version number. For example v1.0.3.

When we add new properties to the JSON responses, the GOV.UK Pay API version number will not change. You should develop your service to ignore properties it does not understand.

We’ll release new and dated versions of the public API if we remove JSON values in a backwards-incompatible manner.

Our version number will be updated in the URL when there is a release. All releases will be marked with full version numbers.

If you want to update to our latest API, make sure you test your code before committing to the change.

We’ll support each version of the GOV.UK Pay API for at least 1 month after we issue an upgrade notice. As the API matures, we may increase this support period to 3 or 6 months.