Entities

Entities are legal entities that own accounts. They are usually people or corporations, but can be other types of organizations, too.

---

Every Account in Increase must be associated with an Entity. Depending on the terms and conditions of your account, the Entity could be the legal owner of the account or a beneficiary of an interest in a for-benefit-of account. When you onboard a new customer, you create an Entity to represent them, and then create Accounts for that Entity.

Entity structures

Increase supports several Entity structures:

Structure	Description
corporation	Any type of business. Requires information about the business and its beneficial owners.
natural_person	An individual person. Requires personal identifying information such as name, date of birth, address, and tax ID.
joint	Multiple individual people with shared ownership. Requires information about each individual.
trust	A legal arrangement where a trustee holds assets for beneficiaries. Can be revocable or irrevocable.
government_authority	A government organization such as a municipality, school district, or other public entity.

Entity Lifecycle

Creating an Entity

To create an Entity, use the Create an Entity endpoint. The required fields depend on the structure.

Updating an Entity

Entities can change over time: for example, address updates are very common. Submit any new data via the Update an Entity API. To delete an Entity, use the Archive an Entity API. You have to close an Entity’s Accounts before you can archive it.

Corporation Entities

Entities of type corporation refer to any business. (For example, nonprofit organizations and partnerships should be registered as corporation.) You’ll submit information about the business and its beneficial owners.

Beneficial owners

For corporation entities, you must submit information about beneficial owners. These are individuals who:

• Own 25% or more of the corporation (the ownership prong), or
• Control the corporation by managing, directing, or having significant control (the control prong)

Every company will have a control prong beneficial owner. You can submit between 1 and 5 beneficial owners for every corporation. A beneficial owner is always a human being, never another company.

Managing beneficial owners

After creating a corporation Entity, you can add, update, or archive beneficial owners as their details change. It’s very common for an owner to leave a business, or for their addresses or names to change independently of the company.

There is a complete collection of APIs for Beneficial Owners.

Supplemental documents

You can attach additional documentation to entities using supplemental documents. This is useful for storing identity verification results from third-party providers, identity documents, or other compliance-related files.

First, upload the document using the Files API, then attach it to the Entity:

curl -X POST \
  --url "https://api.increase.com/entities/${entity_id}/supplemental_documents" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${INCREASE_API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "file_id": "file_makxrc67oh9l6sg7w9yc"
  }'

Webhooks

Increase sends webhooks when entities are created or updated:

• entity.created - Sent when a new entity is created
• entity.updated - Sent when an entity’s details change

See Webhooks for information on receiving and handling webhooks.