Set up credit for connected accountsPrivate preview
Learn how to configure credit terms for your connected accounts and fund their spend from your platform.
How connected accounts work
Connected accounts are separate Stripe accounts that belong to your users (businesses or individuals) but are managed through your platform. Think of them as sub-accounts under your main Stripe account.
Key concepts:
- Your platform account: Your main Stripe account that manages everything
- Connected accounts: Individual accounts for your users (for example, a gym owner, a restaurant owner, a freelancer).
- Credit extension: You can extend credit to your connected accounts, allowing them to spend money they don’t have yet and pay you back later.
Example scenario:
- You run a platform that provides business tools to gym owners
- Each gym owner gets their own connected account
- You can extend them a 5,000 USD credit line to buy equipment
- They spend the credit, then pay you back at the end of the month
How credit works with connected accounts
Use the Credit API to manage the credit terms for your connected accounts. You can select the connected accounts that are eligible to receive credit, set their credit limit and period, and enable them to spend and repay their expenses at the end of their credit period. You can also automatically fund the connected account from your platform Issuing account up to the amount defined in the connected account’s credit terms within its CreditPolicy.
Prerequisites
Complete your platform profile.
Customize brand settings. Adding a business name, icon, and brand color is required for Connect Onboarding.
The Issuing Credit beta is enabled for your account. Contact your Stripe account representative for more details.
See the Custom Connect account creation guide to get set up.
Request the `funding_credit` capability for your connected accounts
In addition to the card_ and transfers capabilities required for issuing cards, you must enable the funding_ capability for charge card programs. The funding_ capability enables a connected account to make charges up to their credit limit, provided that your platform Issuing account has sufficient available funds to support the charges. If you’re creating a new connected account on your platform, you can add the funding_ capability in the same way you request the other required capabilities. If you’re extending credit to an existing connected account on your platform, you can request the funding_ capability through an update account API call.
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/accounts \ -u ":" \ -d country=US \ -d type=custom \ -d "capabilities[transfers][requested]=true" \ -d "capabilities[card_issuing][requested]=true" \ -d "capabilities[funding_credit][requested]=true"sk_test_Hrs6SAopgFPF0bZXSN3f6ELN
Activate the `funding_credit` capability
The funding_ capability becomes active upon request. Stripe then creates an empty, inactive CreditPolicy for the account, triggering the issuing_ webhook event.
Activate the CreditPolicy
The CreditPolicy defines the credit limit and credit period for your connected account.
In our example of Gymbox, let’s say Gymbox wants to extend Barbell (a gym) a 1,000 USD credit limit to be repaid on the 15th of each month. Gymbox makes the following call to configure Barbell’s connected account:
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/issuing/credit_policy \ -u ":" \ -H "Stripe-Version: 2026-04-22.dahlia; issuing_credit_beta=v1" \ -H "Stripe-Account:sk_test_Hrs6SAopgFPF0bZXSN3f6ELN" \ -d credit_limit_amount=100000 \ -d credit_limit_currency=usd \ -d credit_period_interval=month \ -d credit_period_interval_count=1 \ -d "credit_period_ends_on_days[]=15" \ -d days_until_due=0 \ -d status=active{{CONNECTED_ACCOUNT_ID}}
You can set the credit_ property to end the month on any day (1 through 28), or use 31 to set the last day of the month regardless of how many days are in the month.
Example response
{ "livemode": true, "credit_limit_amount": 100000, "credit_limit_currency": "usd", "status": "active", "credit_period_interval": "month", "credit_period_interval_count": 1, "credit_period_ends_on_days": [15], "days_until_due": 0, "last_effective_attributes": { "effective_until": "time_of_update", "credit_limit_amount": null, "credit_period_interval": null, "credit_period_interval_count": null, "credit_period_ends_on_days": null, "days_until_due": null, "status": "active" }, "upcoming_attributes": null }
You can both update and activate the CreditPolicy at the same time, as pictured above. You can also separately activate the policy after setting the fields.
Example response
{ "livemode": true, "credit_limit_amount": 100000, "credit_limit_currency": "usd", "status": "active", "credit_period_interval": "month", "credit_period_interval_count": 1, "days_until_due": 1, "last_effective_attributes": { "effective_until": time_of_update_to_active, "credit_limit_amount": 100000, "credit_period_interval": "month", "credit_period_interval_count": 1, "days_until_due": 1, "status": "inactive" }, "upcoming_attributes": null }
Each of these actions trigger separate instances of the issuing_ webhook event.
After you activate the CreditPolicy, your platform’s available spend applies toward the spend of all of the connected account’s cards, up to the credit limit you set for the connected account. These cards only draw on your platform’s available spend when there are insufficient funds on the connected account’s Issuing balance.
After there are no available funds on the connected account’s Issuing balance and the connected account has reached its credit limit, Stripe automatically declines authorizations. Stripe creates a FundingObligation to help you manage and monitor the amount owed by the account throughout the credit period.
You can future date when the credit period of a credit policy comes into effect using the upcoming_attributes hash and the effective_ timestamp.
See Managing account obligations for information on using the FundingObligation to keep track of your connected accounts’ spend and outstanding balance.