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How Discovery Works

Connect uses the verified Entity’s personally identifying information and the user’s consent to perform a soft-pull credit report. A soft pull is fundamentally different from a hard credit inquiry, it has zero impact on the user’s credit score and leaves no visible mark on their credit report. This is important messaging for your users, who may be hesitant about anything that touches their credit. The credit report reveals the user’s open liabilities across financial institutions. Method parses this data, matches it against its network of 15,000+ supported institutions, and creates account objects for each discovered liability. These accounts are immediately available in your application for data retrieval, monitoring, and (where supported) payment processing.
No credit impact. A soft pull has zero impact on the user’s credit score and leaves no visible mark on their credit report. This is important messaging for your users.

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Connect vs. Manual Connect

Connect is the automatic discovery path, Method finds the accounts for you. But there are scenarios where you already have account data from another source (a prior data pull, user input, a partner integration) and want to register those accounts in Method without re-discovering them. That’s what Manual Connect is for. Manual Connect creates account objects from data you provide, bypassing the credit report discovery step. This is useful for: migrating existing users from a legacy system, supplementing discovered accounts with additional accounts the user provides manually, or connecting accounts that aren’t reported to credit bureaus (and therefore wouldn’t be discovered through Connect).
Method performs a soft-pull credit report and automatically discovers the user’s liabilities.Use when:
  • Onboarding new users
  • You want the broadest possible account discovery
  • Users don’t know all their account details
curl https://production.methodfi.com/entities/ent_au22b1fbFJbp8/connect \
  -X POST \
  -H "Method-Version: 2025-12-01" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_WyZEWVfTcH7GqmPzUPk65Vjc" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{}'

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Coverage — What Gets Discovered

Connect’s coverage spans the broad spectrum of consumer liabilities, including:
  • Credit cards from major issuers and regional banks
  • Auto loans from captive lenders and financial institutions
  • Federal and private student loans
  • Personal and installment loans
  • Mortgages and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs)
  • Collections accounts
  • Medical debt
  • Insurance payment obligations
  • Utility accounts
  • Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) obligations
  • Credit builder accounts
  • Fintech-originated loans
Coverage varies by liability type and financial institution. Not every liability on a credit report will be discoverable, and not every discovered account will support the full range of Method products. Design your product experience to handle varying levels of coverage gracefully.