> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.methodfi.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Accounts

> Liability and funding accounts — the financial objects at the heart of your product.

<Note>
  **Using Opal?** If you're using [Opal](/guides/opal), Method's embedded UI, liability account discovery is handled for you — users complete a soft credit pull and see their accounts inside Opal's Connect flow. You'll still work with the resulting `Account` objects in your backend for payments, monitoring, and ongoing display in your app. Funding accounts are always configured by your team via the API. The rest of this section is most relevant if you're building a custom integration or want to understand the underlying data model.
</Note>

## What a Method Account Represents

An Account in Method is a connected financial account that belongs to one of your users ([Entities](/guides/entities/overview)). Accounts are the objects your product primarily interacts with. You pull data from accounts, monitor accounts for changes, make payments to accounts, and build your user-facing displays around account information.

Every Account belongs to an [Entity](/guides/entities/overview), the person whose financial life you're working with. An Entity can have many Accounts (a typical consumer has 5–15 liability accounts). You'll interact with Accounts through the Entity that owns them: create an Entity, verify their identity, run [Connect](/guides/connect/overview) to discover their liabilities, then work with the resulting Account objects.

Every account in Method falls into one of two categories, and understanding this distinction is essential for designing your product's payment and data flows:

<Tabs>
  <Tab title="Liability Accounts">
    Represent debts and financial obligations. These are the credit cards, auto loans, other obligations that your users owe money on. Liability accounts are typically discovered automatically through [Connect](/guides/connect/overview) and serve as the destination for payments, this is where money goes when your user pays down debt.
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Funding Accounts">
    Represent the bank account your platform pays from. This is typically your corporate checking or savings account linked via ACH that serves as the source of funds for all payments. Funding accounts are created by your team by providing routing and account number details, and must be verified before they can be used.
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

In payment flows, the model is simple: money flows from your platform's funding account (source) to a liability account (destination). Your corporate bank account funds the payment; the end user's creditor receives it.

## How Accounts Are Created

Liability accounts are typically discovered automatically through [Connect](/guides/connect/overview). When you run Connect for an Entity, Method pulls their credit report and creates `Account` objects for every discovered liability. You can also [create liability accounts manually via the API](/reference/accounts/create) if you have the account details.

Funding accounts are created by your team through the API by providing a routing number and account number. See [Funding Accounts](/guides/accounts/funding) for setup and verification details.

## Account Products: What You Can Do With an Account

Every Account carries two arrays that control what operations are available:

* `products`: Capabilities currently available (e.g., `balance`, `payment`, `update`, `card_brand`, `payoff`, `sensitive`, `payment_instrument`)
* `restricted_products`: Capabilities the account could support but require additional steps (like elevated verification or team-level enablement), or capabilities the account does not currently support

Always check `products` before attempting an operation. For example, not all liability types support `payment` — attempting to create a payment on an account without `payment` in its `products` list will fail. See the [Products reference](/reference/accounts/products/overview) for the full list.

***

For the full Accounts API, including all fields, endpoints, and expandable resources, see the [Accounts reference](/reference/accounts/overview).