Accounts
An account represents a store of value for fiat currencies and/or stablecoins.
- Bank account: Account that exists at a regulated depository financial institution (i.e. a bank). Stores fiat.
- Wallet: An on-chain wallet. Stores stablecoins.
- Ledger: An account at a liquidity provider/custodian. May store fiat and/or stablecoins.
Accounts may be managed by Tesser or unmanaged. "Unmanaged" accounts are accounts that were not provisioned by Tesser, and instead were provisioned by a third party. "Managed" accounts are accounts that are provisioned by Tesser.
The distinction is about who provisioned the underlying account, not who created the record at Tesser: Tesser creates unmanaged account records on your behalf to represent external accounts it encounters. The sending wallet on an inbound payment is the common case — the first time funds arrive from a wallet address Tesser has not seen before, Tesser creates an unmanaged wallet account for it. See Receive an Inbound Payment to a Wallet.
Accounts will always belong to the workspace they are created in. They can optionally also belong to one of a counterparty or tenant.
| Belongs to: | Type: Bank account | Type: Wallet | Type: Ledger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workspace | n/a | An omnibus wallet an organization uses to manage its treasury operations in an aggregated manner. (Managed) | An omnibus wallet an organization uses to manage its treasury operations in an aggregated manner. (Managed) |
| Tenant | n/a | A wallet designated for funds belonging to a tenant. (Managed) | A wallet designated for funds belonging to a tenant. (Managed) |
| Counterparty | A bank account that belongs to an originator or a beneficiary. (Unmanaged) For fiat payouts, bank account info as transmitted as part of Travel Rule compliance.
| A wallet designated for an originator or beneficiary provisioned by Tesser. (Managed) A wallet provisioned for the originator or beneficiary by a non-Tesser provider. (Unmanaged) | A wallet designated for an originator or beneficiary. (Managed) |
Wallets
A wallet's type identifies the blockchain family it belongs to, not a single network:
stablecoin_ethereum— the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) family, which includes Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and other EVM-compatible chains.stablecoin_solana— the Solana network.stablecoin_stellar— the Stellar network.
stablecoin_ethereum covers every EVM chain, not just Ethereum mainnet. Because EVM wallets share a single address across all EVM chains, one stablecoin_ethereum wallet has the same crypto_wallet_address on Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and any other EVM network. We use stablecoin_ethereum rather than stablecoin_evm for readability.
Assets
A wallet holds an assets array — one entry per currency and network combination the wallet is enabled for. A single EVM wallet therefore commonly returns balances across multiple networks:
Code
Although an EVM wallet is theoretically compatible with any EVM chain and token, Tesser only enables a curated set of currency and network combinations. See Supported Tokens and Networks for the current list and each combination's status.
Sandbox Networks
In the sandbox, network values are testnet identifiers that map to their mainnet equivalents in production:
| Sandbox (testnet) | Production (mainnet) |
|---|---|
ETHEREUM_SEPOLIA | ETHEREUM |
BASE_SEPOLIA | BASE |
POLYGON_AMOY | POLYGON |
A wallet's assets are generally fixed once it is created. Tesser may enable additional networks or tokens on an existing wallet — coordinated with you in advance — and a new asset can also appear if a wallet organically receives funds on a network it hasn't held before (for example, a rebalance that lands USDC on a newly supported EVM chain).
Wallet Registration with Liquidity Providers
Before a liquidity provider can transfer funds to a wallet, the wallet's address must be registered with that provider:
- Circle: Tesser submits registrations automatically. New wallets are
registered as recipients on every supported network in their family — an
EVM wallet on Ethereum, Base, and Polygon; a Stellar wallet on Stellar.
Each registration starts as
pendingand must be approved in your Circle account console before it becomes active. - OpenFX: In production, you must manually register the wallet address as a withdrawal address in your OpenFX dashboard for the relevant asset. Tesser picks up verified addresses automatically the next time the wallet is used — no API call needed. (Not required in the sandbox.)
Registration is per blockchain network: a wallet can receive withdrawals from a provider on a network as soon as that network's registration is active. Other networks' registrations do not block it.
Circle approval required
Wallets registered with Circle require approval via email: Circle emails your account administrators when approvals are pending. Approve each recipient address within 48 hours (per Circle's notification email); unapproved registrations may expire. Until a network's registration is approved, deposits and transfers to the wallet on that network are rejected. If you didn't approve in time, contact Tesser support.