Introduction to Transactions

Learn what you can do with the transactions endpoints

Introduction to Transactions

Transactions data can be useful for many different applications, including personal finance management, expense reporting, cash flow modeling, risk analysis, and more. Plaid's Transactions product allows you to access a user's transaction history via the /transactions/get endpoint, which can provide transaction history for both depository type accounts such as checking and savings accounts, and credit type accounts, such as credit cards, as well as for student loan accounts. (For transaction history from investments accounts, use Plaid's Investments product.) Transactions data includes transaction date, amount, category, merchant, location, and more.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
{
  "account_id": "BxBXxLj1m4HMXBm9WZZmCWVbPjX16EHwv99vp",
  "amount": 2307.21,
  "iso_currency_code": "USD",
  "unofficial_currency_code": null,
  "category": ["Shops", "Computers and Electronics"],
  "category_id": "19013000",
  "date": "2017-01-29",
  "authorized_date": "2017-01-27",
  "location": {
    "address": "300 Post St",
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "region": "CA",
    "postal_code": "94108",
    "country": "US",
    "lat": 40.740352,
    "lon": -74.001761,
    "store_number": "1235"
  },
  "name": "Apple Store",
  "merchant_name": "Apple",
  "payment_meta": {
    "by_order_of": null,
    "payee": null,
    "payer": null,
    "payment_method": null,
    "payment_processor": null,
    "ppd_id": null,
    "reason": null,
    "reference_number": null
  },
  "payment_channel": "in store",
  "pending": false,
  "pending_transaction_id": null,
  "account_owner": null,
  "transaction_id": "lPNjeW1nR6CDn5okmGQ6hEpMo4lLNoSrzqDje",
  "transaction_code": null,
  "transaction_type": "place"
}

Keeping up to date with Transactions

Transactions data is not static. As time passes, your users will make new transactions, and transactions they made in the past will change as they are processed by the financial institution. To learn more about how transactions are processed and can change, see Transaction states.

Plaid uses webhooks to inform you of updates to Transaction data so you can keep your app up to date. For more detail on how to listen and respond to these webhooks, see Transaction webhooks.

Next steps

To get started building with Transactions, see Add Transactions to your App.