Overview

What is a Recipient?

A Recipient is a party in an exchange of goods or services who receives Payment.

They are often referred to as vendors, billers, suppliers, or merchants.

In Plastiq Connect, Recipients are defined by a set of core attributes described below:

Recipient Attributes

Attribute	Description	API Field Name
Name	The Recipient's name, typically the name of the business being paid	businessName
Industry	The identifier classifying the Recipient's nature of goods or services rendered, typically the industry economy in which the Recipient's business operates	categoryId
Location	The Recipient's primary address	businessAddress
Contact	The Recipient's contact details	contact
Disbursement	The Recipient's disbursement details, how the Recipient will receive Payment	receivingMethod
Status	The Recipient's status in Plastiq Connect	status
Payer	Optional. The payer that has exclusive access to paying the recipient	payer

Categories

In Plastiq Connect, a categoryId is a Recipient Category identifier utilized to classify the goods or services provided by a Recipient.

Categories play a vital total in the treatment of Payments across the Payments Ecosystem.

We'll dive into further detail in the Categories section of this implementation guide to explain why Categories are important when using Plastiq Connect APIs.

Receiving Methods

The receivingMethod property determines how the Recipient receives Payment.

In order to successfully create a Recipient, you must assign a valid receiving method type.

Supported receiving methods today include the following:

ACH

"receivingMethod": {
        "type": "ACH",
        "accountNumber": "127414219421",
        "routingNumber": "021000021",
        "beneficiaryName": "Philz Coffee",
        "country": "US"
    }

CHECK

"receivingMethod": {
        "type": "CHECK",
        "line1": "360 6th St.",
        "line2": null,
        "city": "San Francisco",
        "state": "CA",
        "postalCode": "94103",
        "country": "US"
    }

EFT

"receivingMethod": {
        "type": "EFT",
        "accountNumber": "127414219421",
        "routingNumber": "021000021",
        "beneficiaryName": "Philz Coffee"
    }

WIRE

"receivingMethod": {
        "type": "WIRE",
        "accountNumber": "127414219421",
        "routingNumber": "021000021",
        "beneficiaryName": "Philz Coffee",
        "country": "US"
    }

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ACH vs EFT

ACH is only available as a receivingMethod for Recipients located in the United States. Conversely, EFT is only available as a receivingMethod for Recipients located in Canada.

Fees

A Recipient's disbursement details and location could impact fees and delivery timeframes associated with a customer's transaction.

To learn more about how a Recipient's receiving method could impact fees applied, please review the Payment Fees section.

Delivery Timeframes

Different delivery dates will be quoted on Payments depending on the Recipient's type of ReceivingMethod.

We recommend you review our Payment Delivery Timeframes section to grasp the extent of our fulfillment capabilities and the disbursement options that might be most suitable for your customer.

Scope

Recipients can be scoped in two ways:

Payer Scoped: Recipients created with a payer Id are scoped to the Payer, making them privately available for that specific Payer to make Payments.

Partner Scoped: Recipients created without a payer Id are scoped to the Partner account, making them available for all Payers to make Payments.

You may choose to use either, or both types of recipients in your implementation. Payer recipients are available only to that payer. Partner scoped recipients are available to any payer that you create.

Choose Payer Scoped if you expect each payer to have a private set of recipients. Choose Partner Scoped if you expect multiple payers to pay the same recipient.