Business Requirements Document
Multi tenant Payment Ledger + Operational Dashboard (Stripe synchronized)
0. Scope and business outcomes
Outcome: Deliver a multi-tenant payment ledger and operational experience that stays aligned with Stripe (payments, refunds, disputes) for merchants (scoped to their business) and platform administrators (cross-tenant support).
In scope (business):
- Onboard merchants to accept payments via Stripe Connect without the platform storing sensitive KYC data.
- Provide a trustworthy, explainable view of payment state, refunds, disputes, and risk/exposure.
- Ensure merchants cannot see or act on another tenant’s money movement; admins can support the whole platform.
- Support both human users (browser) and programmatic integrations.
Explicitly out of scope (business):
- The platform is not the system of record for bank/KYC details (Stripe-hosted onboarding).
- The platform does not replace Stripe as the authoritative processor for payment state; the business still relies on Stripe for settlement and dispute resolution mechanics.
1. Personas
| Persona |
Goals |
| Merchant |
See and manage their own payments, refunds, disputes; complete Connect onboarding; use dashboard and/or APIs. |
| Platform admin |
Monitor and support all tenants; investigate discrepancies; operate the platform safely. |
| Integration partner / automation |
Create sessions, read status, refund, capture/cancel via APIs with stable credentials. |
Channel vocabulary (business):
- WEB: browser and dashboard experience (session-oriented).
- CCD: client integrations (APIs, scripts, partner systems).
- CTX: tenant and membership context for who is allowed to do what in a given request.
2. Cross-cutting business requirements
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-ISO-01 |
Tenant isolation: A merchant must only access and act on their own tenant’s financial data. |
| BR-ISO-02 |
Admin cross-tenant visibility: A platform admin must be able to view and support activity across tenants where policy allows. |
| BR-AUD-01 |
Auditability: The business must be able to explain what happened to a payment (timeline, immutable history, webhook receipt). |
| BR-AUD-02 |
No double-processing: Duplicate webhook deliveries must not corrupt balances or timelines. |
| BR-OPS-01 |
Operability: The service must expose health signals suitable for production monitoring and incident response. |
| BR-SEC-01 |
Trust: Webhooks must be authentic; users must verify email before sensitive access; access to money movement must be permissioned. |
3. Feature-area business requirements
3.1 Stripe Connect and multi-tenant model
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-CONN-01 |
Merchants must complete Stripe-hosted onboarding for KYC; the platform must not store sensitive KYC in the same way Stripe does. |
| BR-CONN-02 |
Every payment, refund, and dispute must be attributable to exactly one merchant (tenant) for reporting and support. |
| BR-CONN-03 |
Platform admins must be able to support merchants across tenants without merchants seeing each other’s data. |
3.2 Payment lifecycle (authorization, capture, cancel, refund, dispute)
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-PAY-01 |
Support manual capture: authorize now, capture later when business rules allow. |
| BR-PAY-02 |
Allow authorized funds to be captured or voided (cancel) by authorized users. |
| BR-PAY-03 |
Support full and partial refunds; balances must remain correct over time. |
| BR-PAY-04 |
Refunds must be constrained when business policy says a payment is in a dispute state that blocks refunds. |
| BR-PAY-05 |
Disputes must be visible with a clear lifecycle (e.g. open, won, lost) and impact on exposure. |
| BR-PAY-06 |
The business view of “payment state” must remain consistent with processor reality (Stripe) over time. |
3.3 Inbound events (webhooks) and risk signals
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-WH-01 |
Only accept inbound payment events that are provably from Stripe. |
| BR-WH-02 |
The same event must not be applied twice in a way that changes money totals. |
| BR-WH-03 |
Where available, capture fraud and authentication signals (e.g. Radar, 3DS) for risk and operational review. |
3.4 Risk and exposure
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-RISK-01 |
Merchants and admins need a clear view of exposure and health, not just gross volume. |
| BR-RISK-02 |
Exposure must reflect refunds and disputes, not ignore them. |
3.5 Authentication and authorization
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-AUTH-01 |
Users must verify email before using protected product areas. |
| BR-AUTH-02 |
Support programmatic access via stable mechanisms (tokens and/or API keys). |
| BR-AUTH-03 |
Enforce tenant isolation for merchants; separate platform-level privileges where needed. |
| BR-AUTH-04 |
Sensitive actions must be permissioned (who can refund, capture, manage Connect, etc.). |
3.6 Email (verification)
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-EML-01 |
Deliver verification out-of-band (email) with a link and a fallback code. |
| BR-EML-02 |
Limit abuse (e.g. resend rate limits) for verification emails. |
3.7 Operations and deployment
| ID |
Requirement |
| BR-OPS-02 |
Secrets (keys, webhook secrets, JWT) must be manageable in production without embedding in source. |
| BR-OPS-03 |
Health endpoints must support load balancers and on-call workflows. |
4. Acceptance criteria (business-level)
These are business checks that implementations should satisfy (verified via tests, demos, or production monitoring):
- A merchant cannot access another merchant’s payments, disputes, or refunds by identifier guessing.
- A duplicate webhook replay does not change financial totals incorrectly.
- An unverified user cannot access protected dashboard/API flows that require verification.
- Dispute states that block refunds are reflected in product behavior (refund blocked or constrained).
- Admin can list and inspect cross-tenant activity for support; merchant cannot.
5. Traceability
Feature inventory and numbering align with docs/PROJECT_FEATURES.md. Technical realization is described only in docs/TECHNICAL_SPECIFICATIONS.md and docs/INTEGRATION_DESIGN.md.
Architecture → API reference →