Accounts link together data that represent the state of a financial account, via Postings and the balances that result from these Postings. Accounts are associated with Smart Contract Instances to determine the rules and logic that should be applied to that financial state.

Accounts can also be owned by the financial institution; these are referred to as Internal Accounts. Internal Accounts are used for a variety of purposes, including suspense accounts, wash accounts, and general tracking of assets and liabilities.

Accounts within Vault:

Are backed by Smart Contracts: Each customer account is backed by an instance of a Smart Contract, which drives the behaviour of the account. Accounts are associated with instance parameters and values, which confer account specific behaviour to the Smart Contract instance.

Are linked to a customer identifier: Accounts can be associated to customer records, where customers are recognised as stakeholders of the account.

Are associated to financial state: Accounts maintain a financial state, based on the Posting Instructions applied to the account, with a resulting set of balances.

Route postings via Payment Devices: Posting Instructions can be made directly to accounts by referencing their account ID in the request. Accounts can also be linked to Payment Devices, in order to enable the routing of Posting Instructions to accounts using external identifiers, such as a bank account and routing number combination.

Drive behaviour with flags and restrictions: Accounts can be further driven by Flags, which can be used purely as informational tags and/or for the driving of Smart Contract behaviour. Restrictions endpoints provide a framework in which the financial state of an account can be restricted.