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Rama Pratheeba
Rama Pratheeba

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How I Stopped Guessing Payment Failures in ASP.NET Core (Free Tool)

Payment integrations rarely fail loudly.

They fail silently.

A webhook doesn’t arrive.
A payment status changes unexpectedly.
A duplicate event overwrites valid data.

And suddenly, you're debugging production logs at 2 AM.

After facing these issues in a real payment gateway integration (Worldpay), I decided to build a centralized logging system specifically for payment events in ASP.NET Core.

The Real Problem

Most payment integrations suffer from:

  • Scattered logs across controllers and services
  • No structured audit trail
  • No visibility into status transitions
  • Duplicate webhook events
  • Painful post-incident debugging

Traditional logging isn’t enough when money is involved.

You need a clear lifecycle history for every payment.

The Approach

I built a lightweight component called PaymentEventLogger that:

  • Captures every payment-related event
  • Stores structured audit entries
  • Tracks status changes over time
  • Helps detect duplicate webhook calls
  • Makes production debugging significantly easier

It plugs directly into an existing ASP.NET Core application.

No heavy framework.
No external dependencies.

Just clear visibility.

Example Use Case

Instead of:

_logger.LogInformation("Payment received");

You get:

  • Payment ID
  • Previous status
  • New status
  • Timestamp
  • Source (Webhook / API / Manual)
  • Raw payload reference

All stored in a structured way.

When something goes wrong, you can see the full payment lifecycle instantly.

Why I’m Sharing It

I extracted this component from a real production system and cleaned it into a reusable format.

I’m offering it free during the launch phase while gathering feedback from other developers.

If it helps you, feel free to support the project.

👉** Download here:** https://ramapratheeba.gumroad.com/l/gdzkpw

Closing

Payment debugging shouldn’t feel like forensic investigation.

If you're building payment systems in ASP.NET Core, structured logging is not optional — it's essential.

Would love to hear how others handle webhook auditing in production.

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