A approach is proposed to support typed payment graph-based electronic payment processing. First, schemas for one or more typed payment graphs used for a plurality types of electronic payment processing are defined declaratively. Upon receiving an electronic payment request from a client, a payment processing engine retrieves a schema of a typed payment graph corresponding to the request and processes the electronic payment by traversing states and edges in an instance created from the schema of the typed payment graph. The electronic payment only transitions from one state to another if a valid edge exists between them and a precondition on the edge is met by the processing results of the electronic payment at the state. While processing the electronic payment, the payment processing engine automatically generates an audit trail for the electronic payment based on its states and transitions for real time recovery and/or analysis.