Virtual Account

Ideal for: Giving a customer their own bank account number to pay into, again and again — wallet top-ups, recurring collections, marketplace sellers, or any case where you need to know who sent money without asking.

Virtual account or bank transfer?

Both have the customer send money to a SeerBit-controlled bank account. The difference is how long the account lives and who it belongs to.

	Transfer	Virtual Account
Account lifetime	Generated per transaction, then discarded	Reserved for the customer, reusable indefinitely
Belongs to	One payment	One customer
Created	As part of initialising a payment	Ahead of time, via this API
The amount	Fixed — the account expects that payment	Any amount, any time
Reconciliation	Matched to the transaction it was created for	Matched to the customer the account belongs to
Customer experience	New account details every time they pay	The same account number they can save
Best for	A one-off checkout paid by transfer	Wallet funding, recurring collections, per-customer ledgers

Use a plain transfer when the customer is paying once at checkout. Use a virtual account when the same customer will pay repeatedly and you want every inbound payment attributed to them automatically.

How it works

You create an account against a customer, supplying their name, email and a reference of your own. SeerBit returns a real bank account number at a partner bank. Give that number to the customer; anything they transfer into it is credited to you and attributed to the reference you set. Because the account persists, you do not need to generate anything at payment time — the customer can pay whenever they like, and you match the inbound payment by the account number or your reference.

Authentication

Virtual Account calls are authenticated with a bearer token, generated from your public and secret keys.

POST https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/encrypt/keys

Authentication

How to generate the token, and which credential every other SeerBit API expects.

Create Virtual Account

POST

https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts

Request Sample

The code snippet below shows an example request for creating a virtual account

curl --location 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTED_KEY' \
--data-raw '{
    "publicKey": "YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY",
    "fullName": "Jane Smith",
    "bankVerificationNumber":"",
    "currency": "NGN",
    "country": "NG",
    "reference": "FIRST_VIRTUAl_17",
    "email": "js@emaildomain.com"
}'

var request = require('request');
var options = {
  method: 'POST',
  url: 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    Authorization: 'Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTED_KEY',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    publicKey: 'YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY',
    fullName: 'Jane Smith',
    bankVerificationNumber: '',
    currency: 'NGN',
    country: 'NG',
    reference: 'FIRST_VIRTUAl_17',
    email: 'js@emaildomain.com',
  }),
};
request(options, function (error, response) {
  if (error) throw new Error(error);
  console.log(response.body);
});

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts',
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'POST',
  CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS =>'{
    "publicKey": "YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY",
    "fullName": "Jane Smith",
    "bankVerificationNumber":"",
    "currency": "NGN",
    "country": "NG",
    "reference": "FIRST_VIRTUAl_17",
    "email": "js@emaildomain.com"
}',
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    'Content-Type: application/json',
    'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTED_KEY'
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

Response Sample

The code snippet below shows an example response for creating a virtual account

{
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "data": {
    "code": "S20",
    "payments": {
      "reference": "FIRST_VIRTUAl_7",
      "walletName": "SEERBIT(Business Name)",
      "bankName": " 9PAYMENT SERVICE BANK",
      "accountNumber": "Account Number"
    },
    "message": "Account created "
  }
}

Parameter description

Name	Type	Description
publicKey	`string`	Your SeerBit public key, from Settings > API Keys.
fullName	`string`	Name of the customer the account is reserved for.
email	`string`	Customer’s email address.
reference	`string`	Your own unique reference for this account. Use it to retrieve or delete the account later.
currency	`string`	Currency of the account, e.g. `NGN`. See currency codes.
country	`string`	Country the account is issued in, e.g. `NG`.
bankVerificationNumber	`string`	The customer’s BVN. May be required depending on your account configuration and the partner bank — send an empty string when it is not.

Response fields

Name	Type	Description
code	`string`	`00` on success. See status codes.
payments.accountNumber	`string`	The bank account number to give the customer. This is what they pay into.
payments.bankName	`string`	Partner bank holding the account.
payments.walletName	`string`	Account name the customer will see when they transfer.
payments.reference	`string`	Echoes the reference you supplied.
payments.linkingReference	`string`	SeerBit’s own identifier for the account.

Get Virtual Account

GET

https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{paymentReference}}

Request Sample

The code snippet below shows an example request to get virtual account

curl --location 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{paymentReference}}' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTION_KEY'

var request = require('request');
var options = {
  method: 'GET',
  url: 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{paymentReference}}',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTION_KEY',
  },
};
request(options, function (error, response) {
  if (error) throw new Error(error);
  console.log(response.body);
});

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{paymentReference}}',
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'GET',
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRPTION_KEY'
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

Response Sample

The code snippet below shows an example response to get all created links

{
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "data": {
    "code": "00",
    "payments": {
      "reference": "VA_1",
      "linkingReference": "9PSB641860391656618499020",
      "walletName": "SEERBIT(Business Name)",
      "wallet": "Account Number",
      "bankName": "_9PAYMENT_SERVICE_BANK",
      "accountNumber": "Account Number"
    },
    "message": ""
  }
}

Delete a Virtual Account

DELETE

https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{reference}}

Request Sample

The code snippet below shows an example request for deleting virtual account

curl --location 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{reference}}' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTION_KEY'

var request = require('request');
var options = {
  method: 'DEL',
  url: 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{reference}}',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTION_KEY',
  },
};
request(options, function (error, response) {
  if (error) throw new Error(error);
  console.log(response.body);
});

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/{{reference}}',
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'DEL',
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRPTION_KEY'
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

Response Sample

The code snippet below shows an example response for deleting a virtual account

{
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "data": {
    "code": "00",
    "message": "Virtual account has been deleted"
  }
}

Get Payment

GET

https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY/{{accountNumber}}

Request Sample

The code snippet below shows an example request to get payments

curl --location 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY/{{accountNumber}}' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTION_KEY'

var request = require('request');
var options = {
  method: 'GET',
  url: 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY/{{accountNumber}}',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer YOUR_ENCRYPTION_KEY',
  },
};
request(options, function (error, response) {
  if (error) throw new Error(error);
  console.log(response.body);
});

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => 'https://seerbitapi.com/api/v2/virtual-accounts/YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY/{{accountNumber}}',
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'GET',
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ENCRPTION_KEY'
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);
echo $response;

Response Sample

The code snippet below shows an example response for getting a payment

{
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "data": {
    "code": "00",
    "payload": [
      {
        "id": 14705414,
        "fullName": "Customer Name",
        "publicKey": "YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY",
        "processor": "_9PAYMENT_SERVICE_BANK",
        "paymentType": "TRANSFER",
        "shopperReference": null,
        "amount": 100.0,
        "productId": null,
        "productDescription": null,
        "email": "customeremail@gmail.com",
        "quantity": null,
        "maskedPan": null,
        "gateway": "_9PAYMENT_SERVICE_BANK",
        "gatewayMessage": "Successful",
        "gatewayCode": "00",
        "transactionRef": "GT-01",
        "gatewayRef": "100004230627104826104793084015",
        "businessName": "Business Name",
        "fee": null,
        "mode": "LIVE",
        "callbackUrl": null,
        "redirectUrl": null,
        "channelType": "transfer",
        "paymentKey": null,
        "sourceIP": null,
        "deviceType": null,
        "clientAppCode": null,
        "cardBin": null,
        "lastFourDigits": null,
        "type": null,
        "linkingreference": null,
        "country": "NG",
        "currency": "NGN",
        "smsProvider": null,
        "customerId": null,
        "internalreference": "_SBT_N7N7EU523C",
        "accountNumber": "customer account number",
        "narration": null,
        "creditAccountName": "Seerbit(Tola Sambo)",
        "transferType": "RESERVE_ACCOUNT",
        "paymentReference": "GT-01_SBT_N7N7EU523C",
        "batchId": null,
        "sessionId": null,
        "bankName": "",
        "creditAccountNumber": "4015310501",
        "bankCode": null,
        "alternatePaymentReference": null,
        "settlementCode": "00",
        "settlementMessage": "Push Successful",
        "settlementTime": "2023-06-27 11:49:37",
        "orderStatusCode": null,
        "orderStatusMessage": null,
        "status": "PUSHED",
        "mobileNumber": "404",
        "dateOfBirth": null,
        "branchPhoneNumber": null,
        "transferedAmount": 100.0,
        "scheduleId": null,
        "isCardInternational": "LOCAL",
        "reason": "Successful",
        "retry": false,
        "metaData": null,
        "event": [],
        "order": [],
        "createdAt": "2023-06-27T10:49:28.000+0000",
        "updatedAt": "2023-06-27T10:49:28.000+0000",
        "cardName": null,
        "isNigeriancard": null,
        "cardCountry": null,
        "intCurrency": null,
        "rate": null,
        "inCardProcessingFee": null,
        "intAmountCharge": null,
        "processorCode": "00",
        "processorMessage": "Successful",
        "invoiceNumber": null,
        "billId": null,
        "locationPhoneNumber": null,
        "pocketReferenceId": null,
        "transferAccountType": "STATIC",
        "bearer": "MERCHANT",
        "transLink": null,
        "vendorId": null,
        "payLinkEnvironment": null,
        "payLinkStatus": null,
        "payLinkAmount": null,
        "payLinkAdditionalData": null,
        "payLinkName": null,
        "payLinkDescription": null,
        "payLinkRedirectUrl": null,
        "payLinkSuccessMessage": null,
        "paymentLinkId": null,
        "payLinkCustomizationName": null,
        "payLinkFrequency": null,
        "payLinkIsOneTimeUse": false,
        "terminalId": null,
        "stan": null,
        "transactionComplete": null,
        "cardExpiryMonth": null,
        "cardExpiryYear": null,
        "tokenize": false
      }
    ],
    "message": "successful"
  }
}

Notes

The account number is permanent until you delete it. Give it to the customer once and let them save it — regenerating on every payment defeats the purpose.
Your reference is how you attribute payments. Make it unique per customer and store it against their record, or you will not be able to tell inbound payments apart.
Deleting an account frees the number. A deleted account stops accepting payments; do not delete one a customer may still pay into.
Payments arrive without warning. A customer can transfer at any time, so rely on webhooks rather than polling — see the virtual account transaction event.
Accounts created with test keys only work in test mode. See Test and live modes.

Get Started

Accept Payments

Payment Methods

After a Payment

Payouts & Wallets

Platforms & Marketplaces

In-Store Payments

Reference

Virtual account or bank transfer?

How it works

Authentication

Authentication

Create Virtual Account

Request Sample

Response Sample

Parameter description

Response fields

Get Virtual Account

Request Sample

Response Sample

Delete a Virtual Account

Request Sample

Response Sample

Get Payment

Request Sample

Response Sample

Notes

​Virtual account or bank transfer?

​How it works

​Authentication

Authentication

​Create Virtual Account

​Request Sample

​Response Sample

​Parameter description

​Response fields

​Get Virtual Account

​Request Sample

​Response Sample

​Delete a Virtual Account

​Request Sample

​Response Sample

​Get Payment

​Request Sample

​Response Sample

​Notes

Virtual account or bank transfer?

How it works

Authentication

Create Virtual Account

Request Sample

Response Sample

Parameter description

Response fields

Get Virtual Account

Request Sample

Response Sample

Delete a Virtual Account

Request Sample

Response Sample

Get Payment

Request Sample

Response Sample

Notes