Skip to main content
PlatformManaged Solutions
Sandbox

Revolving Credit

What is revolving credit?​

Revolving credit is a credit card or line-of-credit style product where customers can carry a balance between billing cycles. Unlike Business Charge Cards, customers are not required to pay the full statement balance each cycle. Interest can accrue on outstanding balances, and each cycle has a minimum due amount. Accounts can become past due when minimum payments are missed.

Unit's revolving credit product is built on a Receivables Retention lending program. The bank extends credit to end customers through credit accounts, and each purchase, fee, or cash advance creates a receivable that tracks principal and interest over time.

For API integration details, see the Revolving Credit API reference.

How revolving credit differs from charge cards​

Business Charge CardsRevolving Credit
Balance carryoverFull balance due each cycleBalance can carry between cycles
Interest / APRNo interest chargedInterest accrues per credit terms
Minimum dueFull statement balanceConfigurable minimum due (percentage + floor)
DelinquencyLate feesPast-due tracking, days past due, late fees
Lending programBank or client-sponsored charge cardReceivables Retention
ReceivablesNot usedPer-transaction receivables drive interest, amortization, and billing

Flow of funds​

A customer's card spend or cash advance draws on their credit account. Each draw creates a receivable and increases the account balance, which lowers available credit. Interest accrues on balances carried between cycles. When the customer repays, the balance decreases and available credit is restored.

Separately, under a Receivables Retention program, the bank may sell a receivable to your organization or a capital partner once it reaches its purchase date — the eligibility date set by your program's retention policy. This transfers ownership of the debt; it does not change the customer's balance or experience.

StepWhoWhat happens
SpendEnd customerA card purchase, cash advance, or fee draws on the credit account — creating a receivable, raising the balance, and lowering available credit.
Accrue & billAutomaticallyInterest accrues daily; at the cycle's end date the balance is billed and a minimum due is set.
Sale (optional)Bank → your org or a capital partnerOnce a receivable reaches its purchase date, the bank sells it and ownership of the debt transfers. The customer's balance is unaffected.
RepaymentEnd customerThe customer repays — the balance decreases and available credit is restored.

Core concepts​

Credit account​

A credit account represents the customer's outstanding balance and available credit limit. The account balance is the ledger view of what the customer owes. Use the account's available attribute for remaining credit — Unit computes it as creditLimit - balance - hold - reserve.

Receivables​

Behind each credit account, receivables are the per-transaction debt units. Every card spend, cash advance, or fee creates a receivable, and a single account typically has many. An individual receivable is simple — it records its originalAmount, its remainingAmount, and a repaymentStatus (for example, notRepaid). Statement cycles, minimum due, interest accrual, and past-due status all operate across these receivables, and the account balance is the roll-up of them.

The categorized view of what's outstanding lives on the account receivables daily snapshot, which breaks the balance down three ways:

  • By plan — purchase, cash, or fee (totalRemainingPurchaseBalance, totalRemainingCashBalance, totalRemainingFeeBalance).
  • By billing status — how far a balance has moved through the cycle: billed, minimum due, or past due (totalRemainingBilledBalance, totalRemainingMinDueBalance, totalRemainingPastDueBalance); the rest is current (this cycle, not yet billed).
  • By principal vs. interest — principal is the amount borrowed, interest is the cost of carrying it (totalRemainingPurchasePrincipalBalance, totalRemainingPurchaseInterestBalance, and the equivalent fields for each plan).

See Statement cycle lifecycle for how balances move between billing statuses.

Charge cards do not use receivables; they track outstanding debt on the credit account balance alone.

Plan​

Every receivable has a plan — the category of the charge it came from. Each plan can carry its own interest terms:

PlanCreated by
PurchaseOrdinary card purchases
CashCash advances (including ATM)
FeeFees charged to the account

The plan affects billing in two ways: interest terms are configured per plan, and repayments and statement credits allocate across plans in a defined order (see Repayments and allocation).

Interest terms for each plan are either fixed (a set APR) or variable (a margin added to Unit's prime loan rate). For variable-rate products, retrieve the current benchmark with the Get Prime Loan Rate API.

Statement cycles​

Billing is organized into statement cycles — fixed periods with a start date, end date, and due date. Each cycle carries its own interest terms, minimum-due configuration, and optional cashback rate. See Statement cycle lifecycle for what happens as a cycle progresses.

Daily snapshots​

Each day, Unit produces an account receivables daily snapshot for every active credit account. This snapshot captures daily transaction flows, remaining balances by plan type (purchase, cash, fee), billed and past-due balances, minimum due, and days past due.

Snapshots are the primary billing source of truth partners consume programmatically. Subscribe to the accountReceivablesDailySnapshot.created webhook to react when a new snapshot is available, or retrieve snapshots via the Revolving Credit API.

Statement cycle lifecycle​

Balances move through billing statuses as a cycle progresses. Interest accrues every day; on the cycle's end date the cycle closes and bills; and if the minimum isn't paid by the due date, the balance becomes past due.

Every day     Interest accrues on carried balances; a daily snapshot is produced

End date      The cycle closes:
                • accrued interest is charged (or waived if the account qualifies for a grace period)
                • current balances move to billed
                • the minimum due is calculated
                • cashback is posted, if configured
                • a statement is generated

Due date      If the minimum due wasn't paid, it moves to past due, and
              days past due (DPD) starts counting

The minimum due is set from the account's credit terms — a configured percentage of principal (minDuePrincipalPercent) plus a floor amount (minDueMinimum).

Billing statuses​

StatusMeaningWhere it appears on the daily snapshot
CurrentThis cycle's balance, not yet billedThe plan balances not yet moved to billed
BilledPlaced on the most recent statementtotalRemainingBilledBalance
Minimum dueThe portion required to be paid this cycletotalRemainingMinDueBalance
Past dueA required minimum that wasn't paid by the due datetotalRemainingPastDueBalance

Each of these balances is also made up of principal and interest, and is tracked per plan (purchase, cash, fee) on the daily snapshot. Days past due (DPD) counts the consecutive days the account has carried a past-due balance (daysPastDue); it resets to zero once nothing is past due.

Status transitions​

TriggerTransition
New transaction (spend, cash advance, fee)Balance starts as current
Cycle end datecurrent → billed; a portion is set as minimum due
Due date, minimum unpaidminimum due → past due (DPD starts counting)
Repayment or statement creditReduces balances in a defined order — see Repayments and allocation

Repayments and allocation​

Repayments reduce the customer's outstanding balance and increase available credit. When a repayment settles, Unit allocates it across the account's receivables in a fixed priority order:

  1. Billing status — past due first, then minimum due, then billed, then current.
  2. Plan — fee, then cash, then purchase.
  3. Component — interest before principal.

So an ordinary repayment pays down the most overdue interest first and this cycle's current principal last. Retrieve how a specific repayment was allocated — broken down by plan into principal and interest — using the Get Repayment Breakdown API.

Statement credit (cashback)​

When a statement cycle includes a cashback rate, Unit posts a statement credit on the cycle end date. A statement credit is not a customer payment — it is cashback earned on qualifying purchase volume over the cycle, and it reduces the credit account balance the same way a repayment does.

The amount is net purchases in the cycle (purchases minus purchase reversals) times the cycle's cashback rate. If reversals dominate, the amount is negative and Unit posts a clawback (raising the balance) instead of a credit.

Statement credits are allocated in a different order from repayments — billed balances before past-due, and purchase before fee or cash:

  1. Billing status — billed first, then current, then past due, then minimum due.
  2. Plan — purchase, then fee, then cash.
  3. Component — interest before principal.

In other words, cashback is applied to the cycle it was earned on before older past-due balances — the opposite priority from a customer repayment.

Ownership, retention, and receivable purchase​

Every receivable is owned by the bank, your organization, or a capital partner. Ownership determines who holds the debt — it does not change the customer's balance, repayment flow, or experience.

Under a Receivables Retention program, receivables start out bank-owned. Your lending program's retention policy controls whether and when the bank sells them to you:

Retention policyEffect
No purchaseThe bank keeps every receivable indefinitely; no purchase date is set, and receivables are never sold.
Days(n)Each receivable gets a purchase date of its transaction date plus n days, after which it can be sold.

The purchase date is the day a receivable becomes eligible to be sold — a fixed date of transaction date + n days, exposed as purchaseDueDate on the receivable. Once it becomes due, the bank sells the receivable automatically — to your organization by default, or to a capital partner if one is configured on the program — as long as it hasn't already been fully repaid. A receivable is always sold in full: ownership transfers all at once, never a fraction of one.

Bulk purchase​

Instead of waiting for each receivable's purchase date, you can buy an account's receivables on demand with the Purchase Account Receivables API. It purchases every bank-owned receivable on the account where $0 has been repaid — partially or fully repaid receivables are excluded. After an account has been bulk-purchased, new receivables on it are created already owned by your organization or capital partner.

Monitor upcoming purchase obligations through Receivables Management — list receivables, filter by purchase due date, and generate balance reports.

Program setup and responsibilities​

Setting up a revolving credit program is a shared effort between you, Unit, and your bank partner:

StepWhoWhat's involved
Lending programYou + bank partnerGet a Receivables Retention lending program approved by your bank partner.
Credit termsUnitUnit configures credit terms — billing cycle, interest terms, minimum due, repayment due date, and fees.
Credit accountsYouCreate credit accounts for end customers under the approved program.
CardsYouIssue physical and virtual cards connected to each credit account.
Credit operational accountUnit + youUnit creates the credit operational account as part of program setup; you keep it funded so receivables can be purchased when they become due.
Note

The credit operational account funds your purchases of receivables, not customer spending. In revolving credit the bank extends the credit, so customer authorizations are limited by the account's available credit (creditLimit - balance - hold - reserve) — not by the operational account balance. Unlike Business Charge Cards, where insufficient operational funds decline authorizations, here they only prevent receivable purchases.