Funding accounts

A funding account is a bank account Payabli moves a paypoint’s money into or out of. Payabli deposits the funds from payments you accept into a funding account, collects fees and refunds from one, and draws on one to fund payouts. In intelligent boarding, funding accounts belong to the business behind the paypoint, and each account lists the usages it handles. Understand both before you board a paypoint. This matters most when a paypoint uses more than one bank account.

In the API, a funding account is a payment method of type bank_account, managed with the /v2/payment-methods endpoints. It isn’t the same as the payment methods your customers pay with in Pay In, or the ones your vendors are paid with in Pay Out. For how funding accounts fit with businesses, people, and paypoints, see the boarding overview.

Who owns a funding account

A funding account belongs to the business being boarded, the same business that backs the paypoint. Because a business can back more than one paypoint, its funding accounts aren’t tied to any single paypoint. A business can’t have two funding accounts with the same account and routing numbers.

A new funding account starts in PENDING while Payabli verifies the bank account. You can change its details only while it’s pending. After it’s active, change it through the bank account change process instead, which verifies the new account before any money moves to it. Deactivating a funding account moves it to INACTIVE and keeps the record.

Usages

Each funding account has one or more usages, which tell Payabli what money the account handles. One account can carry every usage, or you can split them across accounts, for example to keep fees and refunds out of the account that receives deposits.

Every funding account needs at least one usage. The services a paypoint requests decide which usages its accounts must cover. A paypoint that sends payouts needs an account with payOutFunding, for example.

More than one account can carry the same usage, such as two accounts for deposits, unless the application requests card services, which allow only one deposits account. To learn how you choose between them, see How funding accounts reach a paypoint.

This is how one business splits its usages across two accounts. The primary account handles everyday money movement, and a second account absorbs refunds and returns:

How funding accounts reach a paypoint

You add funding accounts to the business before you submit its application. Payabli writes them into the paypoint’s setup at boarding. Each service the paypoint requested is set up with the funding account whose usages match it. Paypoints that share a business share its funding accounts.

After boarding, the paypoint’s setup is what decides where its money goes. Updating a funding account doesn’t change a live paypoint’s funding. To change the account behind a live service, submit a bank account change. To learn how those changes are reviewed and applied, see Bank account change lifecycle.

When a paypoint has more than one account for the same kind of payment, you choose where a transaction’s funds go with fund routing. The accountId you send identifies one of the accounts in the paypoint’s setup, which boarding writes from the business’s funding accounts. To learn how, see Route funds from a transaction.

Coming from earlier boarding

Earlier boarding attached bank accounts directly to the paypoint and gave each one a function: deposit, withdrawal, or remittance. Usages replace those functions with a finer split:

An account that handled withdrawals in earlier boarding needs both usages to keep handling the same money.

For how bank accounts work in earlier boarding, see Bank account functions and account IDs.

Related resources

See these related resources to help you get the most out of Payabli.