Clara: Corporate credit card — API integration & OpenFinance services

Card lifecycle & controls

Issue, freeze, replace, and rule-tag virtual or physical Clara cards programmatically — by employee, project, date, time, or MCC. Mirrors Clara's in-app rule engine so policy stays in lockstep with the source platform, while emitting structured webhooks every time a card is created or limits change.

Transaction & statement export

Pull paginated card movements with FX, MCC, settlement, and refund metadata. Export to JSON, CSV, Parquet, or stream to Snowflake/BigQuery for finance reporting and month-end close. Idempotent since_id cursors avoid duplicates during retries.

Receipt & invoice recovery

Automate receipt linking using Clara's invoice retrieval (CFDI in Mexico, NF-e in Brazil): we expose validated tax IDs, RFC/CNPJ matches, and downloadable XML/PDF artifacts so accounting teams stop chasing suppliers manually.

Reimbursement & approval workflow

Submit, approve, and settle out-of-pocket expenses via API. Each request carries the full hierarchy (requester, approver chain, project, cost center) so you can replicate the chain inside SAP, NetSuite, or a custom ledger without re-keying.

SPEI & international payouts

Trigger Mexican SPEI transfers (including financed SPEI on the Clara credit line) and multi-currency international payments with sender/beneficiary metadata, scheduled effective dates, and reconciliation-ready ledger entries when funds land.

Clara Intelligence connector

Bridge Clara's AI copilot signals — outlier detection, duplicate subscriptions, policy breach alerts — into Slack, Teams, Looker, or your own anomaly-detection pipeline through a thin webhook + REST adapter.

1. Continuous month-end close into NetSuite

Context: a Mexican holding with three operating entities closes books on the 5th. Clara card transactions, CFDI receipts, and SPEI vendor payments are pulled daily via the /transactions, /invoices, and /payments endpoints, then mapped into NetSuite vendor bills and journal entries. Maps cleanly to OpenFinance "transaction read" patterns under CNBV's API regulation.

2. Real-time fraud & policy enforcement

Context: a Brazilian fintech wants to flag anomalous card spend across hundreds of employees. We forward Clara card.transaction.created webhooks into a streaming engine (Kafka + Flink), enrich with merchant intelligence, and call back Clara's /cards/:id/freeze if rules trigger. OpenData angle: card events are the primary financial signal.

3. Treasury cash-flow forecasting

Context: a Colombian group needs a 13-week rolling forecast. We aggregate Clara digital account balances (BR), credit-line drawdowns, scheduled SPEI transfers, and FX-quoted international payments into a single time-series store and expose a /forecast endpoint that matches OpenBanking PSD2-style aggregation responses.

4. Compliance evidence locker for audits

Context: an audit firm needs immutable evidence bundles per expense. Each Clara expense pulls its receipt XML/PDF, approval timeline, card transaction, and policy rule into a content-addressed S3 bucket with hashes, ready for SAT (Mexico) or Receita Federal (Brazil) inspection. This is a direct OpenData read-only use case.

5. AI copilot data-lake

Context: a finance team wants to query "show me all restaurant expenses above $100 last quarter" inside an internal LLM. We replicate Clara Intelligence outputs and raw expense records into a vector + SQL store, then expose a thin RAG API; the LLM grounds answers on Clara data without hitting the original UI.

Statement query

POST /api/v1/clara/transactions/query
Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "entity_id": "ent_mx_001",
  "from_date": "2026-03-01",
  "to_date":   "2026-03-31",
  "card_ids":  ["card_9af2","card_7be1"],
  "currency":  ["MXN","USD"],
  "cursor":    null,
  "limit":     200
}

200 OK
{
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "txn_01HXY...",
      "card_id": "card_9af2",
      "merchant": "Aeromexico",
      "mcc": 4511,
      "amount": { "value": 4521.00, "currency": "MXN" },
      "fx": { "rate": 0.058, "settled": "USD" },
      "project_tag": "TRAVEL-Q1",
      "status": "settled",
      "occurred_at": "2026-03-21T17:42:11-06:00"
    }
  ],
  "next_cursor": "eyJpZCI6ICJ0eG5fMDFI..."
}

Issue a virtual card with rules

POST /api/v1/clara/cards
Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>

{
  "type": "virtual",
  "owner_email": "alex@acme.mx",
  "limit": { "value": 1500, "currency": "USD", "window": "monthly" },
  "rules": [
    { "field": "mcc", "in": [5411,5812,5813] },
    { "field": "weekday", "in": ["mon","tue","wed","thu","fri"] }
  ],
  "tags": ["project:GROWTH-2026"]
}

201 Created
{ "card_id": "card_4f7c", "pan_token": "tok_***", "exp": "2030-04" }

Webhook: invoice recovered (CFDI)

POST https://your.endpoint/webhooks/clara
X-Clara-Signature: t=1714329600,v1=4d2a...
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "event": "invoice.recovered",
  "delivered_at": "2026-04-28T12:00:00Z",
  "data": {
    "expense_id": "exp_8b21",
    "transaction_id": "txn_01HXY...",
    "type": "CFDI",
    "uuid": "AAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD",
    "issuer_rfc": "AME010101AAA",
    "total": 4521.00,
    "xml_url": "https://files.clara.com/...xml",
    "pdf_url": "https://files.clara.com/...pdf"
  }
}

# Verify HMAC, then upsert into your accounting system

Mexico — CNBV Open Finance

Mexico's Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV) published in 2020 the general provisions on standardised APIs that frame the country's Open Finance regime. Our Clara integrations stay read-only by default, keep complete audit logs of every consent and request, and are designed so security incidents can be reported to the CNBV without scrambling for forensic data.

Brazil — LGPD

For Brazilian deployments we observe the LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados): lawful basis is recorded per data flow, personal data is minimised on the wire, retention is configurable per dataset, and DSAR/erasure hooks are wired into the warehouse layer. NF-e payloads are stored under encryption at rest with per-tenant keys.

General controls

OAuth-style bearer tokens with rotation, mTLS optional on webhooks, signed payloads (HMAC-SHA256) with timestamp + replay window, IP allow-listing, scoped service accounts per entity, and full request/response logging that survives a typical 7-year tax audit window required by Mexican SAT and Brazilian Receita Federal.

Deliverables checklist

• API specification (OpenAPI / Swagger) covering cards, transactions, expenses, invoices, SPEI, payments, webhooks
• Protocol & auth flow report (OAuth-style tokens, refresh, signed webhook chain)
• Runnable source for login, transaction, and statement endpoints (Python / Node.js)
• Automated test suite + Postman collection + sample dashboards
• Compliance guidance (CNBV Open Finance, LGPD, LFPDPPP, audit-log retention)
• ERP connector blueprints for SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Zoho, QuickBooks

Engagement models

Source code delivery from $300 — runnable API source code and full documentation, payable on satisfactory delivery.

Pay-per-call API — use our hosted endpoints, pay only per call, no upfront fee; ideal for pilots or usage-based teams.

Integration touchpoints

Card lifecycle, real-time card transactions, expense + receipt graph, hierarchical approvals, financed SPEI, international payments, multi-entity admin, AI signals, ERP postings, BI dashboards. Pick a subset or commission the full stack.

About us

We are an independent technical studio specialising in App interface integration and authorised API integration. Our team has shipped fintech, payments, and protocol-analysis work for clients in LatAm, Europe, and Asia — including corporate cards, SPEI/PIX rails, OpenBanking aggregation, and ERP connectors.

• Payments, digital banking, expense management, and cross-border clearing
• Enterprise API gateways and security reviews
• Custom Python / Node.js / Go SDKs and test harnesses
• Full pipeline: protocol analysis → build → validation → compliance
• Source code delivery from $300; pay-per-call hosted APIs as an alternative

Contact

Send us your target app and the scope you need (cards, transactions, expenses, SPEI, invoices, ERP posting). We reply with scope, timelines, and a quote.

Open contact page

Engagement workflow

1. Scope confirmation: list the Clara surfaces you need (cards, transactions, expenses, SPEI, invoices) and the destinations (NetSuite, SAP, Snowflake, custom).
2. Protocol analysis & API design (2–5 business days, complexity-dependent).
3. Build & internal validation (3–8 business days), with sandbox runs against synthetic Clara fixtures.
4. Docs, sample notebooks, Postman collection, and end-to-end test cases (1–2 business days).
5. Typical first delivery: 5–15 business days; third-party approvals or multi-entity rollouts may extend timelines.

FAQ

What do you need from me?

How long does delivery take?

How do you handle compliance?

Can you integrate Clara alongside Brex / Ramp / Concur?