Introduction

The Pinwheel API is built on RESTful principles. All request and response payloads are encoded in JSON. For security purposes, all requests must be sent via HTTPS. To get access to the Developer Dashboard and interface with the API, please contact [email protected].

Modes

The API is available in three modes that can be accessed by sending requests to different servers. Each API Key you are granted will be associated with a single mode.

Authentication

You can view, create, and revoke API Keys for each mode in the Developer Dashboard.

Your API Key is a unique identifier used by Pinwheel for logging and troubleshooting. Your API secret must be included in all requests to the API via a custom HTTP header. API keys are only valid for the mode they were created in.

See API Key Rotation for details on how to create and revoke your keys using either the Developer Dashboard or our Admin API.

Version Headers

The Pinwheel API supports different behavior depending on the API version requested. You must send a Pinwheel-Version header with each request to specify how the Pinwheel API should behave. You can find the latest API version on the Change Management page. If no header is specified the Pinwheel API will default to the deprecated version 2021-04-29. Once version 2021-04-29 is sunsetted, requests without a Pinwheel-Version header will return a 400 Bad Request error.

Responses from the Pinwheel API will include a Pinwheel-Version header specifying which API version was used to process the request.

POST /link_tokens
Host: api.getpinwheel.com
Content-Type: application/json
Pinwheel-Version: 2021-07-28

{
  "required_jobs": ["direct_deposit_switch"],
  "org_name": "Fintech.io",
  // ...
}

Content-Type: application/json
Pinwheel-Version: 2021-07-28

{
  "data": {
    "expires": "2021-01-09T02:52:26+00:00",
    "id": "bd2c09e7-1303-46d5-87c0-0ffa572d7ae4",
    "mode": "production",
    "token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUz....pZ-qZZPO-mA06Dzu-nfUdurwaTUA"
  }
}

For more details, see Versioned Changes in the Change Management page.

Identifiers

There are a number of important objects in Pinwheel's systems. It is particularly useful to store the identifiers for Accounts, Link Token, and Jobs. These identifiers will help you optimize your Pinwheel integration, troubleshoot issues, and reconcile billing. Pinwheel does not have a user model, so it is important to associate these identifiers with users on your end.

Responses

Headers

Every Pinwheel response will contain a unique request identifier. We recommend logging this request identifier to be used for troubleshooting.

Body

All responses are encoded in JSON and return an object with the key data. If the response is a single object, the value of the data key is that object. For example, the Get Employment endpoint will return a single Employment object:

{
  "data": {
    "id": "497f6eca-6276-4993-bfeb-53cbbbba6f08",
    "employer_name": "Apple",
    "status": "active",
    "start_date": "2019-08-24",
    "account_id": "449e7a5c-69d3-4b8a-aaaf-5c9b713ebc65",
    "created_at": "2020-12-28T02:03:47+00:00"
  }
}

If the response is a collection, the value of the data key is an array of objects. A meta key is also returned with metadata about the response. For example the List Platforms endpoint will return a collection of Platforms:

{
  "meta": {
    "count": 2
  },
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "d739ad63-7884-4f4c-a8f0-2c27cdce376d",
      "name": "Zenefits",
      ...
    },
    {
      "id": "2a551145-37b8-4fd8-9260-d595d0214514",
      "name": "ADP Workforce Now",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

Status Codes

Pinwheel API responses use standard HTTP Status Codes.

Rate Limiting

Pinwheel uses rate limiting to safeguard our system against excessive traffic to maximize stability. If your application sends too many requests in quick succession, you may see error responses with a 429 status code. Unless specifically noted, Pinwheel allows 50 queries per second across all API endpoints for requests in production mode, and 10 queries per second for requests in sandbox or development mode. If a higher limit is needed, please contact account manager.

Please structure your application calls to avoid hitting these limits. If you do receive a 429 response, we recommend retrying with an exponential backoff strategy.

Conventions

Some conventions used throughout our API are:

• All dates and datetimes are returned as ISO-8601 strings in UTC Timezone, e.g., 2021-01-03T14:34:16.549923+00:00.
• Object IDs are represented as UUIDs, e.g., 81575384-c55b-4a40-99af-6399910a2520.
• To avoid any potential loss of precision when parsing response payloads, all financial values are represented in the smallest common currency unit along with the ISO 4217 currency code. For example, $292.23 is represented as 29223 with a currency code of USD.

Please contact [email protected] for access to our Developer Dashboard.