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Connect
Using Opal? If you’re using Method’s embedded UI, Opal handles account discovery as part of its managed flow — you don’t need to call the Connect API directly. See the Opal guide for details. The rest of this section is for custom API integrations.

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What Connect Does

Connect discovers and links all of a user’s financial liabilities in a single API call. Using the Entity’s verified identity, Connect performs a soft-pull credit report and matches the results against Method’s network of 15,000+ supported financial institutions. Each discovered liability becomes an Account object in your application, immediately available for data retrieval, monitoring, and payments where applicable.

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When to Use Connect

Connect is the standard path for any product that needs a comprehensive view of a user’s debts: debt management, financial wellness, lending (pre-qualification, consolidation, portfolio monitoring), and bill pay. If your product involves consumer liabilities, Connect is almost certainly how you’ll discover them.

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Prerequisites

Before calling Connect, the Entity must be fully verified (both phone and identity verification completed). Attempting Connect on an unverified Entity returns ENTITY_VERIFICATION_MISSING. See Identity Verification for details.

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What Comes Back

A successful Connect returns a list of Account IDs representing the user’s discovered liabilities. Each Account includes the merchant (who the debt is owed to), the liability type (credit card, auto loan, mortgage, etc.), and the products array indicating what Method can do with that account (balance retrieval, real-time updates, payments). 
{
  "id": "cxn_4ewMmBbjYDMR4",
  "entity_id": "ent_qKNBB68bfHGNA",
  "status": "completed",
  "accounts": [
    "acc_eKKmrXDpJBKgw",
    "acc_GV8WbmJW7KGRy",
    "acc_MLPKh9gQDDbT8"
  ],
  "requested_products": [],
  "requested_subscriptions": [],
  "error": null
}
First Connect vs. subsequent calls. The first Connect for an Entity returns all discovered liabilities (active and closed). Subsequent Connect calls for the same Entity only return new accounts that weren’t in previous results. This is important for re-discovery flows — you won’t get duplicates.

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Understanding Account Products

Each Account returned from Connect has a products array indicating what Method supports for that merchant:
  • balance: retrieve the current balance
  • update: pull real-time data (balances, rates, due dates) directly from the institution
  • payment: send payments to this account through Method
  • sensitive: access full account numbers (gated, requires approval)
Not every account supports every product. A credit card from a major issuer will likely have balance, update, and payment. A collections account may only have balance. Check products before building flows that assume full coverage.

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Next Steps