Getting Started

Slate is embedded financing infrastructure. Your customers get financing — working capital, a charge card, early access to wages — without ever leaving your product. You keep the relationship and the experience; Slate handles underwriting, decisioning, contracts, money movement and credit risk behind the scenes.

Start with a use case

Pick what you want to build. Each guide walks the full journey — endpoints, webhooks, and what your platform does at every step.

Not sure yet? Browse the use cases — each one described in plain words, no code.

How every integration starts

Whichever product you build, the first mile is the same:

1. Get your keys. Sign up for the sandbox, grab your API key from the dashboard, and authenticate every request with the x-api-key header. See Authentication.

2. Create your customers. Register each customer — business or person — using your own stable identifier (externalId). It's your reconciliation key across every Slate object.

3. Share financial data. Send the financial history your platform already has. It powers underwriting — fresher data means better offers.

4. Listen to webhooks. Every meaningful event — offers issued, applications approved, statements ready, payments received — arrives as a signed webhook. Your UI reacts; you never poll. See Webhooks.

From there, follow your product's guide for the specific flow.

The building blocks

Test in the sandbox

The sandbox is a fully isolated environment for building and testing:

• Pre-approvals are created automatically when you upload financial data for a customer — no waiting on underwriting.
• Webhooks, branding and configuration are separate from live; nothing carries over automatically.
• API and component base URLs differ between sandbox and live.

Designed to feel native

Throughout the entire flow, Slate operates as embedded infrastructure. Customers experience financing as part of your platform, while Slate handles the complexity of underwriting, decisioning, and execution behind the scenes.