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Best practices

Store IDs

Save the consumer_id and tradeline_id after creation. You’ll use them for all subsequent calls.

Report promptly

Submit payments as soon as they’re processed. Late reporting can affect the consumer’s credit profile.

Use external IDs

Set external_id (consumers), external_account_id (tradelines), and external_payment_id (payments) to correlate with your system.

Use sandbox first

Develop and test with sk_test_* keys. Switch to sk_live_* only when ready for production.

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FAQ

Depends on your partner configuration. Monthly partners are batched on the 1st of each month. On-demand partners can trigger submissions immediately via POST /submit. Bureau processing typically takes 1-3 business days.
Yes. Send the new ssn in a PATCH /consumers/:id request. It will be re-encrypted at rest.
It’s a soft delete — the record is preserved but hidden from the API. All related tradelines are deactivated. Data is no longer reported to bureaus.
No. Once a tradeline is closed (DELETE /tradelines/:id), it cannot be re-opened. Create a new tradeline instead.
It’s a 24-character string representing the last 24 months, newest first. Each character is a Metro 2 payment history code (0=current, 1=30 days late, 2=60 days, etc.). The API auto-builds this from your payment records.
You’ll receive a 409 CONFLICT error. Each (tradeline_id, period_start) combination must be unique.
No. Sandbox and production have separate rate limits.