Entities are businesses or users that have transactions on your platform.
The /entities endpoint can create, list, and update entities.
It can also be used to run identification/verification workflows on an entity.
When you create a transaction via API, it is typically between two entities. Either or both of those entities can be marked as 'external' (using a key which defaults to 'internal').
Internal versus external entities:
For an internal entity:
- if an entity with that org/external ID pair exists in the system, the transaction is tied to that entity
- if an entity with that org/external ID pair does not exist in the system, a placeholder entity is created and the transaction is tied to that entity. That placeholder can still e.g. trigger entity-based alerts etc.
for an external entity: - if an entity with that org/external ID pair exists in the system, things are handled identically to internal entities
- if not, no entity is created. The entity is treated as 'external' and alerts based on that entity will not show the entity.
- If an entity with that org/external id is LATER CREATED, then all of the transactions that involved that external id/org pair as an external entity will be immediately associated with the new entity, potentially triggering multiple entity-based alerts based on old transactions.