Funding

Directed Spend Accounts are funded using either an Employer-funded model or a Partner-funded model. In the Employer-funded model, employers link their business bank account to First Dollar, and this account acts as the funding source for individual Directed Spends. In the Partner-funded model, a single, partner level bank account is linked to First Dollar, and all individual Directed Spend fundings are pulled from this account.

In either case, partners can then fund individuals via API using the fundBenefitForIndividual API. This process will fund an account for the specified amount and reflect this activity on the account’s ledger.

mutation FundBenefitForIndividual($input: FundBenefitForIndividualInput!) {
    fundBenefitForIndividual(input: $input) {
        ... on FundBenefitForIndividualResult {
            benefitId
            individualId
            transactionId
        }
        ... on BadRequestError {
            message
            code
            retryable
        }
        ... on InternalServerError {
            message
            code
            retryable
        }
    }
}

Funds are immediately available to Cards and for Manual Claims after this API request completes successfully.

A settlement process will occur to settle the debt incurred by a successful funding request. The details of the settlement process are configurable and depend on parameters defined by the partner.

Summary

This guide encapsulates a full end to end flow for setting up and administrating a basic Directed Spend via API. To learn more about additional API capabilities that First Dollar offers, please reach out to us at developer-support@firstdollar.com for support.