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Changelog

Notable changes to the Payload API

Changes that may affect your integration, newest first and dated by production release. Each entry is tagged Added, Changed, Deprecated, Removed, or Fixed.

2026-08-27

Added

  • Top-level email field on the Account object. Accounts now accept email directly alongside name - it's the same underlying value as contact_details.email, just promoted to the top level; use it for new integrations instead of the nested field. Provide one or the other, not both - submitting both returns a validation error, even if the values match. See the Account reference.

Changed

  • Customer accounts no longer require name. You can now create a customer account with just an email. Either name or email must be provided. Processing accounts are unaffected

Deprecated

  • contact_details.email is deprecated in favor of the new top-level email field. Existing integrations continue to work unchanged; we recommend migrating to email when convenient. See the Account reference.

2026-07-07

Added

  • New decline code: balance_unverifiable. Bank account transactions can now be declined with balance_unverifiable when balance check is enabled but the account's bank doesn't provide an available balance to verify against. This is distinct from a balance-check failure, so you can tell the two apart and prompt the customer to use a different payment method. It comes through as a standard TransactionDeclined with the new value on status.code, so existing decline handling continues to work. See Handling Payment Declines.
  • Capture processing agreement acceptance when boarding via the API. When you create a processing account through the Accounts API, you can now submit the business's ESIGN-compliant acceptance directly on the account as the processing.agreement object — the acceptance timestamp, the verbatim assent statement, the authorized signer and their device, an optional consent-event timeline, and a content-addressed reference to the exact terms revision accepted (Payload returns a tamper-evident SHA-256 hash of that document). Re-signing updated terms creates a new agreement and preserves the prior one as history. See the Processing Agreement reference.