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Ele API

Overview

Ele gives businesses multi-currency accounts, payments and cards. This API lets you build your own front end for Ele and run it from your own backend.

How the partner model works

Section titled “How the partner model works”

Your clients are organizations on Ele. Your staff are ordinary Ele users. Each staff member is a member of every client organization they look after, with a role in each one.

Your backend calls the API as those staff members:

  1. A staff member signs in. Your backend receives a session token for them.
  2. Your backend sends that token with each request it makes for them.
  3. Ele checks what that person may do in the organization named in the request.

There is no separate partner account and no request header that switches client. You choose the organization by putting its ID in the path, for example /api/v1/organizations/{organization_id}/balance.

Section titled “Consent and audit”

Ele records every action against the user who made it. If your backend creates a payment with a staff member’s session, the record says that staff member created it. Give each staff member their own Ele login, and never share one login between people.

Some actions need the person to prove again that they are present. This is called step-up. Approving a payment is one of them. Your backend can create a payment, but a person must complete step-up before it can be approved. See Step-up and approvals.

What to expect

Section titled “What to expect”
  • Every request goes over HTTPS with a JSON body and a bearer token.
  • Sign-in needs a password and a code from the person’s authenticator app. See Authentication.
  • A person approves every payment. Ele’s rule is that each approval comes from a person who completes step-up, and these docs ask you to keep it that way. See Keep a person in the loop.
  • Sessions end after 30 minutes without use, and after 30 days at most. Your backend must be ready to sign people in again.
  • Ele does not send webhooks. Your backend reads changes by calling the API.
  • Read Current limitations before you design your integration.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”