Account Lifecycle

Account Lifecycle and Status

Accounts move through a defined set of statuses that reflect their current state:

Status	Description
Active	The account is fully connected, verified (if applicable), and ready for use. All supported products are available. This is the normal operating state for most accounts.
Processing	The account is being set up or verified. For liability accounts, this may be a brief transitional state during discovery. For funding accounts, this typically means verification is in progress (e.g., waiting for micro-deposit confirmation).
Pending Exchange	Account ownership is waiting for an account-consent exchange. Products remain unavailable until the exchange completes.
Disabled	The account has been deactivated within Method. The account may still be active at the financial institution, but Method will not perform new operations on it. This can happen when consent is withdrawn or the account is flagged for an issue.
Closed	Method has detected that the account is closed at the financial institution. The debt may have been paid off, the card may have been canceled, or the loan may have been settled. No new operations are available, but historical data remains accessible.

Common causes of Disabled status: the Entity’s consent was withdrawn, the Entity’s verification expired or was revoked, the account was flagged by Method’s risk monitoring, or your team explicitly disabled it via the API. Check the account’s error field for the specific reason.

State Transitions

Processing → Active: Account setup or verification completes successfully
Active → Disabled: Account is flagged for an issue or disabled after consent is withdrawn. May be reversible — listen for account.update webhooks and retrieve the Account
Active → Closed: Method detects the account is closed at the financial institution (debt paid off, card canceled, loan settled)
Disabled → Active: The issue is resolved and the account is re-enabled
Closed is terminal — closed accounts do not reopen

Webhook tip: Subscribe to account.update and account.closed webhook events to handle transitions in real time rather than polling. Retrieve the Account after account.update to inspect its current status.

Key Webhooks

account.update: Account status or data changed
account.closed: Account was closed
update.update: An Update changed status; retrieve it to check for completion or failure

Subscriptions: Automatic Data Refresh

Instead of manually requesting Updates or Balances, you can subscribe an account to automatic refresh. When subscribed, Method periodically fetches fresh data and notifies you via webhook. See Update Subscriptions for details. The subscriptions and available_subscriptions arrays on each Account show what’s currently active and what can be enabled.

Products and the Lifecycle

Each account carries a products array — the list of Method capabilities currently available for that account. Products include: update (refresh balances/data), balance (real-time balance), payment (send funds to creditor), card_brand (card art and product name), payoff (eligible auto-loan and mortgage payoff quotes), sensitive (full account numbers), attribute (credit health metrics), and the typed Payment Instrument products payment_instrument.card, payment_instrument.network_token, and payment_instrument.inbound_achwire_payment. Product availability depends on three factors:

Account type: card_brand applies to supported card networks, while payoff applies to eligible auto loans and mortgages (see Liability Types)
Account status: Disabled and Closed accounts lose most products
Team configuration: Some products require team-level enablement (check restricted_products)

Always check the products array before attempting an operation. Attempting an operation not in products will return an error. See the Products reference for the full list.

Getting Started

Entities

Identity Verification

Connect

Accounts

Updates

Payments

Additional Products

Use Cases: Commerce

Use Cases: Lending

Use Cases: PFM