External Accounts represent your user’s financial accounts (bank accounts, debit cards, etc.) that can be used to withdraw funds. Bridge validates all external accounts and performs KYC/KYB on the user so you as a developer don’t need to. You have two options to let customers link bank accounts:
  1. Bridge API (covered below)
  2. Plaid (refer here)
You can add external fiat accounts through our External account API using the following request.
Request
curl --location 'https://api.bridge.xyz/v0/customers/<customer-id>/external_accounts' \
--header 'Idempotency-Key: ea-7' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Api-Key: <api-key>' \
--data '{
  "currency": "usd",
  "account_type": "us",
  "bank_name": "Lead Bank",
  "account_name": "Ada Checking Account",
  "first_name": "Ada",
  "last_name": "Lovelace",
  "account_owner_type": "individual", // specifies an individual account
  "account_owner_name": "Ada Lovelace",
  "account": {
    "routing_number": "101019644",
    "account_number": "215268129123",
    "checking_or_savings": "checking"
  },
  "address": {
    "street_line_1": "923 Folsom Street",
    "country": "USA",
    "state": "CA",
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "postal_code": "941070000"
  }
}'
Response
{
    "id": "039c270f-a038-40be-be7b-43f550ce0678", // external account id
    "customer_id": "23c2d462-4c69-4c5a-b31a-88d035d7e8ae",
    "created_at": "2025-07-05T19:03:50.819Z",
    "updated_at": "2025-07-05T19:03:51.251Z",
    "bank_name": "Lead Bank",
    "account_name": "Ada Checking Account",
    "account_owner_name": "Ada Lovelace",
    "active": true,
    "currency": "usd",
    "account_owner_type": "individual",
    "account_type": "us",
    "first_name": "Ada",
    "last_name": "Lovelace",
    "business_name": null,
    "account": {
        "last_4": "9123",
        "routing_number": "101019644",
        "checking_or_savings": "checking"
    },
    "beneficiary_address_valid": true,
    "last_4": "9123"
}