Introduction

Bank linking connects a cardholder's bank account (via Plaid) so their bank activity flows into the same transaction stream as their card spend. It unlocks two things: net-new bank-only events — fees, transfers, payroll, loan payments, foreign-exchange markup — and earlier settlement of card transactions. Both ride the transactionmessage.created, transaction.created, and transaction.updated webhooks you already operate — no new event types are required for that unified stream. Bank linking also emits a few dedicated events (banklink.completed, bankaccount.state_changed, and the bank-record events) covered in Bank Linking Webhooks & Events.

What you get

Bank linking is bank-first: connecting the bank unlocks bank-only events on its own, and linking cards is an optional second step that adds earlier settlement for card spend.

Two ways to use it

• Alongside a card program — link a bank and cards: you get bank-only events plus earlier settlement of card transactions.
• Bank-only — link a bank with no cards and use it as a standalone bank-data source in place of card enrollment. Every bank transaction surfaces (via banktransaction.created and a SETTLED transaction.created), but you don't receive card authorizations or match events. See Bank-only mode.

In this section

• Quick Start: Bank Linking — the end-to-end on-ramp: create a link, the cardholder connects their bank through Plaid, discover accounts, link cards, and receive events. Start here.
• Linking Cards to Bank Accounts — automatic detection and manual card linking, historical backfill, and the multi-card rules and constraints.
• Bank Linking Webhooks & Events — every event the flow emits, the bank-only vs earlier-settlement behaviors, and where each payload lives.

Next steps

• Quick Start: Bank Linking — begin the integration.
• Webhook Event Types — the canonical event catalog.