Getting Started

This page will help you get started with the Brass API.

To get started with integrating your account into your actual business operations workflow, you'll need to create one; but to reduce the possibilities of making "money mistakes" during development, we've created a separate environment to allow you test and verify your integration works as expected, before you go live.

There are two (2) products you'll need to get familiar with, as you interact with Brass:

  1. The Dashboard
  2. The API

Environments

All products exist in our two (2) main environments:

  1. sandbox
  2. production

and the reason is to have uniformity across these environments, to bring you as close to what is "real" while you're integrating.

EnvironmentDashboard URLAPI URLPurpose
sandboxhttps://app.getbrass.co https://sandbox-api.getbrass.coYou should use this environment while testing and experimenting with your integration as it provides safety when performing money operations
productionhttps://app.trybrass.com https://api.getbrass.co You should switch to this environment as soon as you're ready to go.

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Production vs Sandbox

All money operations in the production environment require actual funds existing in the account being tested with and actual funds will be moved; while similar operations in the sandbox environment are only simulations - no real money is used anywhere.

Getting Onboarded

Interacting with the API requires a fully onboarded account irrespective of the environment the action is happening in; to get this done, we recommend you sign up & complete onboarding on the relevant dashboard app for the chosen environment.

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Onboarding on sandbox

While onboarding in the sandbox environment, please DO NOT use valid documents when filling the onboarding forms; you're instead advised to upload sample documents or images as required.

When onboarding is completed, your documents are submitted for manual review by the onboarding team.

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No review is required on sandbox

The manual review process is skipped in sandbox as the expectation is that its only use for testing integrations, and no actual "valid" documentation is provided.

In sandbox, you'll only need to wait for between 5 - 10 minutes after onboarding, to be granted access to the dashboard product.

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Test money on sandbox

When onboarding is completed in the sandbox environment, an account is set up for you and credited with some money.

Be aware that the account created does not actually exist, and you thus, cannot send actual funds to it from any bank.

When you have access to the dashboard, the next step is to sign into your account and create your first Personal Access Tokens.

Creating your first Personal Access Token [PAT]

When making calls to the API, the easiest way to authorise requests is via a PAT - this is due to a few properties:

  1. They are separate from your account password
  2. They can be revoked at any time without affecting use of the service
  3. You can assign a subset of your permissions to the PAT being created.
  4. You can - and should - issue multiple PATs for different apps that need access to your Brass data and thus revoke them separately without affecting the others.

You can either use the Create PAT endpoint or go to the Personal Access Token Page on your dashboard and click the add icon to create your first PAT. Make sure to copy the token as it is only displayed once for security purposes.

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Only live in our sandbox environment

Please note that this feature is currently available in our sandbox environment at the moment.