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Institutions

Institutions represent the supported banks through which fiat payout transfers are processed. Fetch the list for a given country and currency before initiating a bank or swift payout.

Get Supported Banks​

Use the unified endpoint to fetch all supported banks for a country and currency. It aggregates institutions across Celar's payout providers.

Request​

curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.sandbox.celar.io/api/v1/payments/banks/unified/{country}/{currency} \
  --header 'Accept: application/json'

Replace {country} with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. KE) and {currency} with the fiat currency code (e.g. KES).

Response​

{
  "success": true,
  "country": "KE",
  "currency": "KES",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "KCBLKENAXXX",
      "name": "Kenya Commercial Bank"
    },
    {
      "id": "EQBLKENA",
      "name": "Equity Bank Kenya"
    }
  ]
}

How Institutions Are Used​

The id returned for each bank maps directly to the destination.bankCode field when creating a fiat payout:

"destination": {
  "paymentMethod": "bank",
  "bankCode": "KCBLKENAXXX",
  "accountNumber": "0123456789",
  "currency": "KES"
}
note

This endpoint is only needed for bank and swift payment methods. Mobile money providers (e.g. MPESA, MTN, AIRTEL) are static and do not require a lookup — pass them directly as destination.serviceProvider.

Look Up a Bank by BIC/SWIFT Code​

If you already have a BIC or SWIFT code, you can look up its details directly.

Request​

curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.sandbox.celar.io/api/v1/bank/{code} \
  --header 'Accept: application/json'

Response​

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "name": "Equity Bank Kenya",
    "bic": "EQBLKENA",
    "country": "KE"
  }
}