7. Creating an Instrument

Instruments are a basic building block for Transaction Monitoring (Fraud and Risk Analysis). They can be a credit card, wallet, ach and more.

Unit21 can associate transactions and entities with instruments.

Instruments represent any physical, digital, or logical intermediary between an entity and a transaction event such as:

  • a Credit Card #
  • Cash
  • a Bank Account
  • an Invoice
  • Store Credit

When transactions occur between entities, an instrument can be added. Transactions call also occur between instruments (and involve no entities at all):

  • Sarah Smith sent Paul Smith 5 ETH using a Wallet
  • $25,000 USD wired from Bank Routing # 072403473 to Bank Routing # 041215016
  • Credit Card A received $567 from Credit Card B
  • User jarmin04 used store credit to make a $380 purchase online

Create a Sample Instrument:


  1. Log into your Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to the Data Explorer:
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  1. Go to the Upload File tab:
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  1. Download this JSON file on your computer. You can highlight the text and copy-paste it into a text editor like Notepad. Save the file as Create_instrument_lee01.json and make sure no extra text is added and that the file extension is JSON and not TXT.
[{
     "instrument_id": "cc-7291",
     "instrument_type": "card",
     "source": "internal",
     "status": "active",
     "entities": [
          {
               "entity_id": "Baker01",
               "entity_type": "user"
          }
     ]
}]

This JSON file will create a credit card instrument and associate it with Annabelle Lee.

  1. Drag and drop Create_instrument_cc01.json to the Upload File widget.
  2. Make sure the file uploaded correctly, it should be labeled as Awaiting Trigger:
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  1. Select Process in the menu:
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  1. Patiently wait while Unit21 validates and processes the file.
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  1. Refresh the page until you see Process Success under the status of the file:
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  1. Success! Now let's see the results by navigating to the Instruments tab (you may need to use the filter to find the instrument):
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  1. You can click on the new instrument in the table to view additional details:
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  1. Click on Go To Detail Page -> to open up an instrument detail page:
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Instruments are simple objects. Instruments can have additional informational data such as status, source, registration date and owner (which entity owns this instrument).

  1. The instrument is associated with Baker. As such, you can find the instrument from the Baker entity page:
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In summary, the Unit21 foundation is composed of:

  1. Entities - a user or business
  2. Instruments - an object that is used to exchange currencies
  3. Transactions - two entities (and/or instruments)that exchange currencies

Now that we have explored the three main concepts of the Unit21 system, we can bring them all together and start monitoring fraudulent transactions.