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In the Unified API model, your engineering team drives everything: you call Chift’s endpoints directly and read or write your customers’ financial data whenever your product needs to. Chift keeps the credentials working and gives you one consistent API shape across every connector. New to the terms connector, consumer, and connection? See How it works first.

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Who does what

  • You create the consumer, create the connection, and hand the resulting activation link to your end-user. Afterwards you make the Unified API calls.
  • Your end-user opens that link and authorizes access to their software — signing in via OAuth2, entering API credentials, or installing the local agent, depending on the connector. Some connectors then ask follow-up questions, such as which accounting folder or which POS location to use.
  • Chift stores and refreshes the credentials, and exposes the data through one Unified API shape regardless of which connector is behind it.
Unified API model

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What you store

Just the consumerid. Keep it on your customer record: it is the key you pass to every Unified API call to say whose data you want. You do not need to store connection IDs for normal use — Chift resolves the right connection from the consumer and the API you are calling. The exception is a consumer with two connectors serving the same Unified API, where you disambiguate with a header. See Multiple connections per consumer.

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The build path

1

Authenticate

Exchange your API key for a bearer token. See Authenticate with Chift API.
2

Connect a customer

Create a consumer, create a connection, and send your end-user the activation link. See Create a connection.
3

Confirm and maintain the connection

Verify activation, then keep the connection healthy over time. See Monitoring & updating connections.
4

Call the Unified API

Read and write data for the consumer through the relevant Unified API. Browse endpoints in the API reference.

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In this section

Create a connection

The full flow, from consumer to active connection.

Activation links & redirects

Control where your end-user lands after activation.

Monitor connections

Confirm activation and keep connections alive.

Multiple connections per consumer

Two connectors serving the same Unified API.