Definition
A webhook is a way for one system to notify another of an event in near real time by sending an HTTP request to a URL the receiver has registered in advance. Instead of the receiver repeatedly polling an API to ask "has anything changed?", the source system pushes a small payload — event type, identifiers, a timestamp, often a signature — to the receiver's endpoint the moment the event occurs.
Webhooks are the standard mechanism for event-driven integration between services on the modern web.
Reliable webhook design has well-known requirements: the payload should be signed so the receiver can verify it is genuine; the receiver should respond quickly and process asynchronously; delivery should be retried with backoff on failure; and the receiver must be idempotent because the same event can be delivered more than once. Without these, webhook integrations lose or duplicate events under load.
In context
In iGaming, webhooks and their close cousin the affiliate postback carry the events that money depends on. A payment provider sends a webhook when a deposit clears or a chargeback is raised; a KYC vendor sends one when a verification passes or fails; a game provider or aggregator sends round and jackpot events; a CRM or platform sends registration, first-deposit and self-exclusion events to downstream tools.
The affiliate S2S postback is essentially a webhook from the operator to the affiliate's tracker announcing a registration, qualified deposit or revenue event.
Because commissions, bonuses and compliance actions are triggered by these messages, the reliability requirements are not optional. A missed FTD webhook means an affiliate is not paid and a player may not receive a bonus; a duplicated one can double-count a conversion; an unsigned one can be spoofed to fake conversions.
Operators and affiliates therefore secure webhooks with signatures or IP allowlists, log every received event, reconcile webhook-driven counts against source-of-truth reports on a schedule, and build replay tooling so a missed batch can be re-sent. Most affiliate-operator payment disputes that are not about traffic quality come down to webhook or postback delivery gaps, which is why testing this layer at integration time is standard practice.
Worked example
An operator's FTD webhook to an affiliate network fails silently for six hours during a provider outage. Because both sides log events and reconcile daily, the gap is caught the next morning; the operator replays the missed events, the network's tracker de-duplicates against its logs, and the affiliate's conversions and commission are corrected without a dispute.
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Frequently asked questions
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