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Introduction
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Virtual accounts
What are virtual accounts?
Virtual accounts are a parallel layer to supported blockchains in Tatum and enable many useful features otherwise unavailable at the blockchain level.
How do they work?
Virtual accounts automatically scan associated blockchain addresses for incoming transactions and update their own balances to reflect the assets received.
When you create a virtual account, you can connect it to an existing blockchain address (or addresses) or generate a new blockchain deposit address connected to the account. Whenever any blockchain address connected to a virtual account receives an incoming transaction, the virtual account’s balance will be updated to reflect the newly received funds.
Each virtual account is in a single currency. This can be either a cryptocurrency or a virtual fiat currency.
Virtual accounts can be connected to blockchain addresses or represent virtual currencies that can be pegged to a fiat currency. Virtual accounts can be in Bitcoin or Ethereum, Euro or U.S. dollar. Using virtual currencies, developers can use fiat and cryptocurrencies in the same way with the same API calls.
Each virtual account contains a single currency but can be connected to multiple blockchain addresses for that currency. Virtual accounts can only perform transactions with other virtual accounts of the same currency.
Multiple virtual accounts of different currencies can be grouped together using a customer ID. In this way, your users can easily view the balances of all the currencies they hold with one API call, allowing you to build multi-currency wallets and various fintech applications.
Transactions performed between virtual accounts are instant and do not incur any blockchain fees.
Because transactions between virtual accounts do not happen on the blockchain, they do not incur blockchain transaction fees and are happen instantly. This provides huge benefits for working with blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin, both of which have high transaction fees and slow transaction times. Virtual accounts allow you to build solutions parallel to the blockchain and bypass the slow and often congested transaction mechanism of the blockchain itself. If users want to send their crypto outside of your app, they can withdraw it from their virtual account to their blockchain deposit addresses.
What else can you do with them?
- Set up webhook notifications - Use subscriptions to virtual accounts to enable webhook notifications for various blockchain events.
- Block/unblock amounts in accounts - For many fintech or exchange apps, blocking and unblocking amounts opens up a wide range of possibilities.
- Freeze/unfreeze accounts - React instantly to reports of suspicious behavior and unfreeze accounts just as quickly once the situation has been remedied.
- Activate/deactivate customers - With multiple virtual accounts tied to a single customer, you can easily activate or deactivate all of them with one API call.
- Implement limit and futures trades - Open, close, cancel, get, and list trades and chart data with built-in API calls to create exchanges quickly and easily.
Please refer to the Virtual Accounts section of our Guides to find out how to set up virtual accounts on 3 different types of blockchains and how fully leverage their advanced capabilities in your app’s backend.
Last modified 3mo ago