Update Email Addresses

Sometimes merchants lose access to the email address that is on file and subsequently need assistance regaining access to their account. To resolve, your support team needs to verify the merchant's identity and have access to edit the email address on file.

This cookbook will help you find merchant account details and update the email address on file.

Custom Method

1. Search Accounts

There are many reasons a merchant may no longer have access to their email address, so a search function should provide a variety of search parameters. Recommended search parameters include:

Email address
Merchant-facing account ID
Merchant account name (ex: store name for ecommerce platforms)
Merchant account owner's name

Either build a search tool to pull Legal Entity and Account data from your own database, or build a search tool to pull the following data points to make GET /accounts and GET /legal_entities API requests:

Account reference_id
Legal Entity reference_id

An example custom display for your employees to search WePay accounts.

Display results leveraging useful details, such as Account name, reference_id, etc:

An example custom display of results for your employees searching WePay accounts.

2. Display Merchant Details

If pulling the above data points, then send a GET /accounts and GET /legal_entities using the reference_id to populate your merchant details view.

An example custom display of merchant details from the results of a search.

3. Edit Email Address

Once the merchant account has been found, provide a support-facing UI to update the email address.

For instance, a popup like this would trigger upon clicking the “edit” button in the mock above:

An example custom edit email interface for your employees to update a merchant's email address.

On the back end, the UI will take the new email address, set it as the controller.email parameter, and send it in a POST /legal_entities/id API request. The parameter values break down like this:

Parameter	Value Origin
Legal Entity ID	Collect the Legal Entity ID based on the merchant being viewed.
`controller.email`	New desired email address identified by the merchant.

Once the required values have been collected in the UI, and the support agent has hit “submit”, send a POST /legal_entities/id request with the new email address and mark it as unverified, like so:

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Copied

{
  "controller": {
    "email": "{new-email}",
    "email_is_verified": false
    }
}

Using the same trigger (support agent hits submit), send your verification email out to the new email address, and be sure to update your internal data as well.

Partner Center Method

A. Search Accounts

Navigate to the Merchants option under the Merchants menu in Partner Center. Search by WePay API Account name and copy the Merchant ID from the results list:

How to search account in WePay's Partner Center

Or select a merchant from the results to view details and copy the Merchant ID there:

An example of how account details show up in WePay's Partner Center.

Note

The Merchant ID displayed in the Partner Center is the same Merchant ID displayed in the Merchant Center (for merchants with Link partners). This is also the same as the WePay API Account ID.

B. Edit Email Address

Provide a UI for your support team to submit the Merchant ID and the new email address:

What the edit email interface looks like in Partner Center.

On the back end, use the value submitted in the Merchant ID field to send a GET /accounts/{id} API request. Fetch the value of owner.id from the response. Next, construct a POST /legal_entities/id request using the value for the new email address submitted in the UI. The parameter values break down like this:

Parameter	Value Origin
Legal Entity ID	Value of `owner.id` from `GET /accounts`.
`controller.email`	New desired email address identified by the merchant.

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Copied

{
  "controller": {
    "email": "{new-email}",
    "email_is_verified": false
    }
}

Using the same trigger (support agent hits submit), send your verification email out to the new email address, and be sure to update your data as well.

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