Getting Started with Payments
Before initiating any Credit Transfers or Direct Debits, you need to create a Counterparty with an External Account and retrieve the ID of your own source account. This ensures payments are directed to the correct beneficiary and sourced from the right bank account.

Create a Counterparty with an External Account

Counterparties must be created before initiating payments.
You can do this either in the Atlar Dashboard or via the API:

curl 'https://api.atlar.com/payments/v2/counterparties' \
  -u 'ACCESS_KEY:SECRET' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "legalName": "Max Müller",
    "alias": "Customer #123",
    "partyType": "INDIVIDUAL",
    "accounts": [{
      "market": "DE",
      "identifiers": [{
        "market": "DE",
        "type": "IBAN",
        "number": "DE75512108001245126199"
      }]
    }]
  }'

Save the ID of the created external_account ($.accounts[0].id) since this will be used when making your first payment.
The ID can also be found by navigating to the counterparty details in the dashboard.

Retrieve the ID of the Initiating (Source) Account

To make a Credit Transfer or collect a Direct Debit via our API on one of your configured bank accounts, you need to retrieve the ID of the source account.
You can do this by either:

• Navigating to the account details in the dashboard, or
• Querying the API endpoint /financial-data/v2/accounts.

curl 'https://api.atlar.com/financial-data/v2/accounts' \
  -u 'ACCESS_KEY:SECRET'

Creating the Credit Transfer

After you’ve configured the Roles & Users, set up Counterparties, and retrieved the IDs, you’re ready to create your first Credit Transfer.
To create a credit transfer, you’ll need to specify the $.source.id (identifying one of your bank accounts) and the $.destination.id (identifying the counterparty’s account).

To make a SEPA Credit Transfer:

curl 'https://api.atlar.com/payments/v2/credit-transfers' \
  -u 'ACCESS_KEY:SECRET' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "amount": {
      "currency": "EUR",
      "value": 2500
    },
    "date": "yyyy-mm-dd",
    "scheme": "SCT",
    "source": {
      "type": "ACCOUNT",
      "id": "<source account id>"
    },
    "destination": {
      "type": "EXTERNAL_ACCOUNT",
      "id": "<external account id>"
    },
    "reference": "payout-12345"
  }'

Approving the Payment

If a payment is created and no Approval Chains are configured, or if a payment is created but falls outside the conditions set by existing Approval Chains, the Owner of the organization must approve the payment.
It is possible to configure approval chains to not require any approvals (i.e., auto-approvals or straight-through processing), but Atlar follows a security-first approach where this is an opt-in feature.

The easiest way to approve payments is through the Atlar Dashboard, but it is also possible to approve them over the API: Approve credit transfer.

Staying up to Date with a Payment

You can stay informed of payment status changes by setting up webhooks.
Create and manage webhooks via the /v1/webhooks endpoint.

What’s Next?

Create additional roles and invite your colleagues to the platform.
You can also configure Approval Chains to suit your payment needs in Settings.
For example, you might specify a threshold below which credit transfers and direct debits are automatically approved or require the approval of a specific user.