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Entities — The Foundation of Every Integration

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What an Entity Represents

An Entity is Method’s representation of a person or business that your application serves. Think of it as a persistent profile that Method maintains on behalf of your user, it’s the anchor point that connects their identity, their verified status, their discovered accounts, their payment history, and their ongoing subscriptions into a single, coherent object. Every interaction your application has with Method on behalf of a user flows through their Entity. When you verify a user’s identity, you’re verifying their Entity. When Method discovers accounts, they’re attached to the Entity. When you initiate a payment, it’s authorized through the Entity. This centralized model means your application has a single reference point for everything related to a given user in Method’s system.

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Why the Entity Object Matters

You might wonder: why not just pass user data with each request? The Entity model exists for several important reasons.
  • It provides a consistent identity layer. Once an Entity is verified, that verification persists. You don’t need to re-verify the user every time you want to pull account data or make a payment. The Entity carries the user’s verified status forward.
  • It scopes all data and operations to a single person or business. This means you can retrieve all accounts for an Entity, all payments for an Entity, or all updates for an Entity with a single reference. It also means Method can enforce authorization boundaries, operations on one Entity’s accounts can’t accidentally affect another Entity.
  • It enables lifecycle management. As your relationship with a user evolves, from initial onboarding through active usage to potential deactivation, the Entity’s status tracks this journey and enforces appropriate constraints at each stage.

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Entity vs End User

Your application has users; Method has Entities. These map one-to-one. Each end user in your application corresponds to exactly one Entity in Method, and that relationship persists throughout the user’s lifecycle. You’ll typically store the Method Entity ID alongside your internal user ID so you can bridge between the two systems seamlessly.

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Individual vs Corporation Entities

Method supports two types of Entities, corresponding to the two types of financial actors:
Individual Entities represent people. To create one, you provide identifying information, typically at minimum a name and phone number, with additional fields (date of birth, address, SSN) required for identity verification and access to downstream products. Individual Entities are by far the most common type and support the full range of Method’s products.
curl https://production.methodfi.com/entities \
  -X POST \
  -H "Method-Version: 2025-12-01" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_WyZEWVfTcH7GqmPzUPk65Vjc" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "type": "individual",
    "individual": {
      "first_name": "John",
      "last_name": "Doe",
      "phone": "+15121234567"
    }
  }'
Next: Entity Lifecycle