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Onboard a Customer

Walk through creating a verified Organization Customer and linking the payment methods you need for later lending or collection flows.

1. Create the Customer

Call POST /customers with BVN, international phone, and email. Names come from the BVN identity fetch — do not send them yourself. The same organization plus BVN combination is idempotent.

POST/customers
curl https://api.aellaapp.com/customers \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer {token}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"bvn":"22122212221","phone":"+2348012345678","email":"john.doe@example.com"}'

Save data.id — every later step uses this Customer id.

2. Start a card link

Call POST /customers/{customerId}/cards. When the response status is pending, send the Customer to data.metadata.authorization_url.

3. Confirm the card

Prefer webhooks: customer.card.link.successful and customer.card.link.failed. You can also poll GET /customers/{customerId}/cards.

4. Start a direct debit link

Call POST /customers/{customerId}/direct-debits with account_number and bank_id. Show data.metadata.instruction to the Customer so they can confirm the mandate.

5. Confirm the direct debit

Listen for customer.direct_debit.link.successful, customer.direct_debit.link.failed, or customer.direct_debit.link.deleted. Polling GET /customers/{customerId}/direct-debits works while you wait.

What's next

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