Bank account linking

The Bank Account linking process in Prime API enables secure connections to Borrowers' business bank accounts using Prime’s open banking integration with Plaid. This secure connection is required for loan disbursement and payment setup, allowing Prime to verify account ownership and establish automated payments.

Partner integration starts by requesting a Link Token which initiates a secure banking session. This token is used with Plaid’s frontend widget (Plaid Link) to launch a bank selection interface where Borrowers can safely connect their accounts. The process is entirely handled by the Plaid widget to ensure banking credentials are never exposed to the Partner interface or Prime.

After a successful connection, the Partner’s front-end will receive a public token (via the success callback from the Plaid Link widget). Since this token is required by Prime to continue bank linking in the background, it must be added to the Application record (see Application Enrichment) by calling the Application banking-related endpoints (see API reference and code below).

Note : Prime supports connecting multiple accounts but currently uses the primary account for both disbursement and payments.

Code sample : back-end

import requests

headers = {
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {auth_token}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    }

# Step 1: Create a new link token 
def generate_new_link_token(auth_token, application_id):
    link_response = requests.post(
        f"https://api.primeft.com/v1/applications/{application_id}/bank_accounts/link",
        headers=headers
    )
    
    if link_response.status_code != 200:
        raise Exception("Failed to get link token")
    
    link_token = link_response.json()["link_token"]
    print("Use this token with Plaid SDK:", link_token)
    

# Step 2: After user connects bank in frontend, save connection
def save_bank_connection(application_id, public_token):
    connect_response = requests.post(
    		f"https://api.primeft.com/v1/applications/{application_id}/bank_accounts",
      	headers=headers,
      	json={"public_token": public_token}
    )

    if connect_response.status_code == 200:
      	return connect_response.json()

Code sample : front-end

Code examples and complete guide is available here : https://plaid.com/docs/link/web/

Important : You don't need to have a Plaid account in order to connect your users, Prime is providing you with the valid tokens to do so, so in Plaid documentation, you should skip the part about generating new tokens to initialize Plaid Link, and use the Prime-provided link token instead.

Import the Plaid Link widget

<script src="https://cdn.plaid.com/link/v2/stable/link-initialize.js"></script>

Initialize the UI widget

const handler = Plaid.create({
  token: 'LINK_TOKEN',  // as provided by Prime API
  onSuccess: (public_token, metadata) => {},
  onLoad: () => {},
  onExit: (err, metadata) => {},
  onEvent: (eventName, metadata) => {},
});

Open the widget when the user is ready

handler.open();

To retreive the Public Token once the user has successfully connected their accounts, a callback function need to be created at initialization

const handler = Plaid.create({
  ...,
  onSuccess: (public_token, metadata) => {
    // send the public token to your back-end then to Prime
    fetch('//yourserver.com/application/1/complete_bank_connection', {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
      },
      body: json.Stringify({
        public_token: public_token,
      }),
    });
  }
});