Glossary

Just to make sure we are all on the same page - get familiar with some of the words we use.

Account

An Account is the representation of a bank account inside a financial institution. An end-user can have several Accounts inside a Link. For example, in a bank one Link can have a checking account, several credit cards, and even loan or investment accounts.

Income

An Income represents a list of insights about the income of a user through their bank account. For example, the different income sources, the income transactions, how certain we are that a source is actually income.

Institution

An Institution is an entity that Belvo can access information from. This can be a bank or fiscal office.

Invoice

An Invoice is the representation of an electronic invoice, that can be received or sent by a business or an individual and has been uploaded to the fiscal institution website.

Multiple INFLOW (invoice received) and OUTFLOW (invoice sent) invoices can be retrieved inside each link coming from a fiscal institution.

Link

A Link is a set of credentials associated with an end-user's access to an Institution. For example, the username and password used to log in to an online banking platform.

You need to register a Link before accessing information (such as Account or Transaction details) from that specific end user.

Owner

An Owner represents the person who has access to a Link and is the owner of all the Accounts inside the Link.

Secret Key

A Secret Key is an ID and password pair you need to authenticate with the Belvo API. You need to create a Secret Key before making API calls. When you register a Secret Key (via our dashboard), you'll receive the ID and password pair via email.

Tax compliance status

A Tax compliance status gives an indication of whether a person or business is complying with their tax obligations at the moment of the request. The information is extracted from SAT's Opinión de cumplimiento de Obligaciones Fiscales document.

Tax returns

A Tax return is the representation of the tax return document sent every year by a person or a business to the tax authority in the country.

The tax return data structure will be different depending on if it is related to a person or a business.

Tax status

A Tax status (Constancia de situación fiscal) is the representation of a person's or business's tax situation in the country, according to the tax authority.

The tax status data structure will be different depending on if it is related to a person or a business.

Transaction

A Transaction contains detailed information about each movement inside an Account.

Payment intent

A Payment Intent keeps in-depth information about your user’s journey throughout the payment process. Your use case for payment intents differs depending on the integration you choose:

Payment links

Belvo's Payment Link is a link that can be shared with customers, and when clicked, it will open a fully responsive payment widget that guides the user through the payment process. To create a payment link, you only need to provide some basic information, such as the payment amount, the receiving account, and a description of the payment. Once the link is created, you can share it with your customer, and they can complete the payment quickly, easily, and securely.

Throughout the payment link process, Belvo will send you webhooks regarding your user’s current status in the payment flow. For more information about the webhooks you’ll receive, check out:

  • Our dedicated webhooks article.
  • The widget diagrams in the OFPI Inflow implementation guide.

Server-to-Server

For server-to-server integrations, the payment intent resource will walk you through the necessary steps that you need to guide your user through in order to complete the payment flow. For each payment method, the payment intent steps (as well as response payloads) will differ due to the regulatory requirements of the country.

Payment transaction

A payment transaction means an actual movement of funds from one account to another. And so Belvo will generate a transaction every time you receive a payment.