Entity Onboarding is how you bring a business onto the Priority Commerce Engine (PCE) programmatically. Instead of a portal form or a spreadsheet handed to an operations team, you send one API call that describes the business — its legal details, the people who own and sign for it, its bank accounts, its physical locations, and the services it wants to use — and PCE creates the whole entity graph and starts it down the underwriting path.

This is the first step before any money moves. A business must exist and be approved on PCE before it can accept a payment. Entity Onboarding is where that business is created.

What you can do

How onboarding works

The journey runs from getting access to taking the first payment. It has two halves — first you build the business, then it goes through underwriting and goes live. Underwriting is asynchronous: a business gathers its requirements, is submitted for review, and only goes live once approved.

Part 1 — Build the business

flowchart LR
  subgraph P1[1 · Connect]
    A1[Get access to<br/>onboard businesses]
  end
  subgraph P2[2 · Build the business]
    direction LR
    B1[Create the business] --> B2[Add owners & signers<br/>one control person] --> B3[Add bank account,<br/>address & location] --> B4[Choose to accept payments] --> B5[Provide required documents]
  end
  A1 --> B1
  B5 --> R([Ready for review])

Part 2 — Underwrite & go live

flowchart LR
  R([Ready for review]) --> C1{Everything<br/>provided?}
  C1 -- still missing info --> M[Add the missing info] --> C1
  subgraph P3[3 · Underwriting]
    direction LR
    C2[Submitted for review] --> C3[Underwriting review]
  end
  C1 -- yes --> C2
  subgraph P4[4 · Go live]
    direction LR
    D1[Business approved<br/>& active] --> D2[[Take the first payment]]
  end
  C3 -- approved --> D1
  C3 -- declined --> C1

Step by step:

1. Create the business. POST /v1/businesses accepts the full nested graph in one request. You can start with just a legal name and fill in the rest later, or send everything at once. See Create a business.
   APIs: POST /v1/businesses
2. Add the people. Every business needs its beneficial owners and authorized signatories, with exactly one person marked as the control person. People are modelled as shared Individuals that you link into the business.
   APIs: POST /v1/individuals · POST /v1/businesses/{businessId}/owners · POST /v1/businesses/{businessId}/signatories
3. Add bank accounts, addresses, and locations. A funding bank account, a registered address, and at least one location with its processing profile are what acquiring underwriting needs.
   APIs: POST /v1/businesses/{businessId}/bank-accounts · POST /v1/businesses/{businessId}/addresses · POST /v1/businesses/{businessId}/locations
4. Enable a service. Onboarding for payments means enabling the acquiring service (and any features it needs). PCE surfaces what's still missing on the service object itself.
   APIs: PATCH /v1/businesses/{businessId}/services
5. Underwriting decides. Once requirements are complete, the entity moves to PENDING_UNDERWRITING, then to ACTIVE when approved. Track it with statuses.
   APIs: GET /v1/businesses/{businessId}

Where this fits

Onboarding creates the merchant that then uses the rest of PCE. Once a business is ACTIVE with the acquiring service approved, it can begin accepting payments.