To implement a Commercial cards program, follow these steps.

1. Create the account hierarchy

Parent-child relationships define how limits are shared. A hierarchy can contain multiple levels. To organize the accounts in a program, specify the ID of the parent account for each account in the hierarchy, except for the top-level account, which has no parent. You can specify the parent ID when creating an account using the Create account application endpoint. To specify the parent ID for an existing account, use the Update account endpoint. For more information, refer to the Accounts guide.

2. Configure the centralizing account

The hierarchy must identify the centralizing account. This is normally the top-level account in the hierarchy. Do this by running either Create account application or Update account and setting the centralizer field to true in the body parameters.

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Make sure all accounts that are not centralizers have the centralizer field set to false. This is the default.

3. Enable shared-limit processing

To control which organizations and programs can use shared limits, you must use balance configuration.

If you haven't already created a balance configuration, create one using the Create balance configuration endpoint. To enable shared limit processing, include a global_configs object with impact_parent_accounts set to true.

If a balance configuration already exists and doesn't have a global_configs object with impact_parent_accounts set to true, use the Replace balance configuration endpoint to replace it with one that does.

Once enabled, authorizations evaluate credit availability across all impacted accounts in the hierarchy.

4. Enable limit restoration

After the Pismo platform discharges a payment, it should restore the limits on the centralizer and all its child accounts. Enable this behavior by setting authorization.update_balance_after_discharge=true in the acceptance configuration associated with the invoice-payment processing code. You can use the platform configuration or acceptance configuration endpoints to do this. For more information, refer to the Payment methods configurations overview guide.