Introduction

Connecting to a bank account enables payments and data requests with Lean's APIs. Bank connections are stored as Entities and Payment Sources for Data and Payment applications respectively.

In order to connect a user's bank account you need to implement the following items:

Create a Customer
Implement the LinkSDK and use the .connect() method
Implement a webhook handler for the entity.created and/or payment_source.beneficiary.updated webhooks.

More details Fetching Bank Data: Open Finance Enablement

Entity model

An Entity maps to a user's entire relationship with a specific bank. You will need to decide on the permissions you want to gain consent for from your customer during the linking process.

An example Entity object will look something like the following:

{
    "id": "79a59cd9-d95c-43ec-9a8f-9a203b9085f2",
    "customer_id": "46e347b6-ad9b-4a35-9f68-23de08c182b0",
    "bank_identifier": "MOCK_UAE",
    "permissions": {
      "identity": true,
      "accounts": true,
      "balance": true,
      "transactions": true,
      "identities": false,
      "scheduled_payments": false,
      "standing_orders": false,
      "direct_debits": false,
      "beneficiaries": false
    },
    "bank_type": "RETAIL",
    "created_at": "2026-01-12T15:07:06.089596Z",
    "consents": [
      {
        "id": "886c65d1-ce6c-469d-a57f-195cba4bbafc",
        "bank_consent_id": "b5f06361-6bd1-4bff-af79-c594312881dc",
        "bank_identifier": null,
        "consent_type": null,
        "consent_status": "ACTIVE",
        "standard_consent_status": null,
        "permissions": {
          "identity": true,
          "accounts": true,
          "balance": true,
          "transactions": true,
          "identities": false,
          "scheduled_payments": false,
          "standing_orders": false,
          "direct_debits": false,
          "beneficiaries": false
        },
        "creation_date_time": "2026-01-12T15:05:46Z",
        "status_update_date_time": "2026-01-12T15:05:46Z",
        "expiration_date_time": "2027-01-12T15:05:45.169Z",
        "transaction_from_date_time": null,
        "transaction_to_date_time": null,
        "accounts": [
          {
            "scheme_name": "ACCOUNT_NUMBER",
            "identification": "0331234567890123456",
            "name": "Lean Bank Account",
            "secondary_identification": null
          },
          {
            "scheme_name": "IBAN",
            "identification": "AE070331234567890123456",
            "name": "Lean Bank Account",
            "secondary_identification": null
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }

Full details of fetching bank data in open finance is here.