# Scenario overview

> Saved payment methods, subscriptions, pre-authorization, profit sharing, and refunds explained by business scenario — concepts, lifecycle, and notifications — with the parameter differences across Checkout, Web SDK, and Direct API.

This section is organized by business scenario and is independent of the integration method: the guides cover concepts, operations, and result notifications. Scenarios that require configuration when creating a payment also compare the parameters across Checkout, Web SDK, and Direct API. The integration flow of each method is described in [Checkout integration](/payments/online-payments/checkout), [Web SDK integration](/payments/online-payments/sdk), and [Direct API integration](/payments/online-payments/api); signature verification, acknowledgement and retries, deduplication, status interpretation, and result queries are covered in [Webhooks](/payments/get-started/webhooks). For profit share notification URLs, verification, and acknowledgement, see [Profit sharing](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/profit-sharing).

## Scenarios at a glance

| Scenario | Typical business | Checkout | Web SDK | Direct API |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Saved payment methods](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/saved-payment-methods) | Repeat purchases without re-entering card details | Customer opts in to save | Customer opts in to save | Server-side tokenization, token payments |
| [Subscription payments](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/subscriptions) | Recurring charges, automatic or merchant-initiated | Initial subscription | Initial subscription | Initial subscription, renewal, plan changes |
| [Pre-authorization and capture](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/pre-authorization) | Deposits, reservations, securing funds before shipping | Pre-authorization | Pre-authorization | Pre-authorization, capture, void |
| [Profit sharing](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/profit-sharing) | Allocate funds after a payment in the platform model | Configure at payment creation | Configure at payment creation | Configure at payment creation |

After a successful payment, your server requests [refunds](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/refunds) through the API. The refund guide covers requests, result notifications, queries, and cancellations.

Whichever integration method creates the transaction, your server initiates self-managed subscription renewals, managed subscription plan changes, and pre-authorization captures and voids through the Direct API.

## Three kinds of tokens

Three kinds of tokens appear in the documentation and are not interchangeable:

- **Card token**: the `tokenId` obtained after the customer opts in to save a card or your server tokenizes one, used for later token payments; see [Saved payment methods](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/saved-payment-methods).
- **Subscription token**: the `tokenId` returned in the [subscription payment webhook](/payments/api-reference/webhooks/subscription-payment), paired with `contractId` for renewals and plan changes; see [Subscription payments](/payments/online-payments/scenarios/subscriptions).
- **Encrypted wallet token**: the one-time encrypted payload returned by the Apple Pay or Google Pay SDK. Pass it through unchanged as `tokenId` in the [`tokenInfo` field](/payments/api-reference/endpoints/direct-create-transaction#request-tokenInfo) and name the wallet token provider in `provider` so that Onerway decrypts it; it cannot be saved or reused.

A subscription that also saves the card produces both a card token and a subscription token; the two token systems must not be mixed.