How do I create external bank accounts for the customer?

Learn how to create fiat external bank accounts for individual and business customers

Choosing your external bank account type

There are two types of external bank accounts:

1. Plaid:  The customer connects their external bank account via Cybrid's Plaid account.
2. Plaid processor token:  The customer connects their external bank account via the partner's Plaid account.

Type #1:  Plaid

Cybrid offers the convenience of leveraging the Cybrid Platform Plaid account so partners do not have to provide their own Plaid account.

As an alternative to Cybrid's web SDK, you can choose to programmatically drive the process through our APIs and your implementation of the Plaid Link SDK.  This approach provides greater flexibility and customization options for your integration with the Cybrid Platform.

Here is the step-by-step process for programmatically driving the external bank connect process with Cybrid's API and the Plaid Link SDK:

• Create a new workflow with kind:"link_token_create" via the POST /api/workflows endpoint.
• Use the workflow guid from above to retrieve plaid_link_token using the GET /api/workflows/{guid} endpoint.
• Use the plaid_link_token from above to initialize the Plaid Link SDK.
• Upon a successful connection in the Plaid Link SDK, capture the plaid_public_token and plaid_account_id.
• Create an external bank account for the customer via the POST /api/external_bank_accounts endpoint using the plaid_public_token and plaid_account_id from above. 

An example POST external bank account request body is below:

{
  "name": "<insert descriptive account name>",
  "account_kind": "plaid",
  "customer_guid": "<insert customer_guid>",
  "asset": "USD",
  "plaid_public_token": "<insert plaid_public_token>",
  "plaid_account_id": "<insert plaid_account_id>"
}

Type #2:  Plaid processor token

Partners that prefer, or already have, their own Plaid account may integrate with the Cybrid Platform.  Partners must:

• Enable the Identity product with Plaid
• Enable the Modern Treasury processor in your Plaid environment
• Generate the plaid_processor_token with modern_treasury as the provider
• When creating funding transfers on the platform where you are pulling funds from the customer's account, ensure the customer has sufficient balance (i.e. NSFs are the partner's responsibility)

With the above complete and after a customer has been created, you can then create an external bank account for the customer via the POST /api/external_bank_accounts endpoint.

An example POST external bank account request body is below:

{
  "name": "<insert descriptive account name>",
  "account_kind": "plaid_processor_token",
  "customer_guid": "<insert customer_guid>",
  "asset": "USD",
  "plaid_processor_token": "<insert plaid_processor_token>",
  "plaid_institution_id": "<insert plaid_institution_id>",
  "plaid_account_mask": "<insert plaid_account_mask>",
  "plaid_account_name": "<insert plaid_account_name>"
}