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Handling Partial Results

Connect may not discover every liability a user has. Design your product to treat partial results as the normal case.

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Why Results May Be Incomplete

Not all liabilities appear on credit reports. Some debts (private loans between individuals, certain employer-provided benefits, some BNPL arrangements) are never reported to credit bureaus and won’t be found by Connect. Reporting delays. New accounts may not appear on a credit report for 30–60 days after opening. A user who just opened a credit card last week won’t see it in Connect results yet. Unmatched institutions. Method’s network covers 15,000+ institutions, but some smaller or newer creditors may not yet be supported. The tradeline exists on the credit report, but Method can’t create an actionable Account from it because the institution isn’t in Method’s network. Closed accounts. The first Connect returns both open and closed accounts. Closed accounts may have limited product availability (e.g., no payments, no updates).

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Show what was found, invite manual additions

After Connect completes, display the discovered accounts and provide a “Missing an account?” flow that guides your users to Manual Connect: 
curl https://production.methodfi.com/accounts \
  -X POST \
  -H "Method-Version: 2025-12-01" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_WyZEWVfTcH7GqmPzUPk65Vjc" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "holder_id": "ent_au22b1fbFJbp8",
    "type": "liability",
    "liability": {
      "mch_id": "mch_302086",
      "account_number": "1234567890"
    }
  }'
Finding the merchant ID. Use the Merchants endpoint to search for a financial institution by name. The mch_id uniquely identifies the creditor in Method’s network.

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Enable Connect subscriptions for ongoing discovery

New liabilities that appear on future credit reports will be automatically discovered. See Connect Subscriptions.

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Handle zero results gracefully

If Connect returns zero accounts (thin credit file), don’t show an empty state. Explain that the credit report didn’t contain tradelines and offer Manual Connect as the path forward.

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Account-level product gaps

Even when an account is discovered, it may not support all products. Always check the products array before making assumptions: 
const account = await method.accounts.retrieve('acc_eKKmrXDpJBKgw');

if (account.products.includes('payment')) {
  // Safe to initiate payments
} else {
  // Data-only — can retrieve balances but can't send money
}
For the full Connect API, see the Connect reference.