Skip to main content
Ready-to-LaunchCustom Builds
Start Building Now

Counterparties

The counterparty resource represents the other party that participates in a financial transaction.

When a customer is expected to send funds to same counterparty on multiple occasions you may create a counterparty resource and re-use it by creating an ACH payment to linked Counterparty, instead of the customer typing the routing number and account number repeatedly.

Security Recommendations​

When creating an API Token, Unit recommends not to select the payments-write and counterparties-write scopes. However, we do recommend selecting the payments-write-counterparty scope, which allows making payments to a counterparty resource only.

When using the recommended scopes for API Token you would first need to Create a Customer Token (along with two-factor authentication) in order to create the counterparty resource.

The counterparty resource also allows you to make (automated) payments without creating a Customer Token or selecting sensitive scopes for the API Token, by using ACH payment to linked Counterparty and API Token with only payments-write-counterparty selected.

This adds another layer of security, because the API Token alone cannot make payments to counterparties which are not created and approved by the customer.

Account Funding​

Account Funding - allowing a customer that just created an account to fund his new account using an external account (account within another bank or institution) owned by the customer.

Unit supports Account Funding by creating a counterparty with Plaid Processor Token and then creating an ACH Debit Payment.

Important Info

Anything that involves ACH Debit is high risk. The counterparty can claim that an ACH Debit is unauthorized and return it up to 60 days after receiving the ACH Debit. A known fraud is to originate an ACH Debit, wait for the payment to be cleared, spend the entire balance and to then claim that the payment was not authorized.

Important Info

You should deeply think about your Account Funding limits, per single payment, daily and monthly. Please consult Unit team on the matter.

Verifying the identity and balance​

Because Account Funding is high risk, Unit recommends that you would verify the identity and balance of the counterparty using Plaid. Unit supports both of those operations:

  • Identity - specify true for the verifyName field when creating the counterparty, Unit would use Plaid Identity and a fuzzy name match algorithm to verify a match between the name of the counterparty and the name of the external account's owner.
  • Balance - specify true for the verifyCounterpartyBalance field when creating the payment, Unit would use Plaid to verify that the counterparty account has sufficient funds.
Note

When creating a counterparty for Account Funding purposes, make sure to use the same name as the name of the customer.

How To Fund an Account​

  1. Use Plaid Link to allow the customer to provide the account for Account Funding.
  2. Exchange the access token to Unit's processor token.
  3. Create a counterparty with the processor token, name set to the customer name and the verifyName set to true.
  4. Create an ACH Debit Payment, set the verifyCounterpartyBalance to true.
  5. Wait for the payment to be cleared.
ResourceDescription
ACH PaymentsCreating payments using counterparties
Plaid PartnershipInformation on using Plaid with Unit