# Monitor and track payments

After creating a payment, you need to know when it completes, fails, or requires action. Payments Direct provides two approaches for tracking payment state:

- **Webhooks**: Ripple sends a notification to your endpoint each time a payment transitions to a new state. This is the recommended approach for production integrations.
- **Polling**: Your application periodically queries the API to check the current payment state. Use this approach for low-volume scenarios or when a publicly reachable webhook endpoint is not available.