Merchants & Liquidity Accounts

Both are places funds can be directed and held within a tenant. The difference is control: a merchant is paid out automatically on a schedule, while a liquidity account lets the tenant move funds manually.

Merchant

A merchant is whoever receives funds within a tenant, either a person or an organisation. It might be a business selling goods, a private individual, or any recipient of funds.

Each merchant has its own merchant_id and belongs to exactly one tenant. The same real-world party under two tenants is kept strictly separate. In a payment, merchants are named on items: an item directs its amount to a merchant_id, so one payment can pay several merchants at once.

A merchant has an external bank account and a payout schedule, the route by which its funds leave Ping. Before any payout, the merchant must be onboarded: every payout receiver completes KYC verification first, a legal requirement under Swedish and EU regulation. The method varies by market (in the usual setup, individuals via AIS and BankID, organisations via a Oneflow agreement), and Ping advises during onboarding. KYC also renews periodically by risk profile.

Liquidity Account

A liquidity account is banking-as-a-service inside Ping. You get an account with a balance, and you operate it yourself. Funds can arrive and sit there for as long as you like. Nothing moves until you move it.

Use one when your product needs to hold money rather than just pass it along. If you are building something that behaves like an account for your own users, build it on this.

A liquidity account receives funds the same way a merchant does. Name it on a payment item, or make it a recipient in the split tree. It has its own liquidity_account_id.

There are two ways to move funds out:

• Transfer to another liquidity account. Use this to move your own money around inside Ping.
• Disburse to a merchant. The funds become that merchant's, and leave Ping on the merchant's payout schedule rather than yours.

Both are Ping Credit payments (provider: ping, method: credit) with a source and a destination. Liquidity accounts covers how to open one and make each move.