> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.lead.bank/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Your Banking Infrastructure (Core Surface)

> The Lead-managed core accounts behind your program — FBOs, operating, settlement, and shadow accounts — and how you read them.

<a href="/core-concepts/platform/platform-evolution"><Badge color="blue">APIs planned</Badge></a>

Behind every program sit real bank accounts on Lead's core: the **FBO** that pools your customers' deposits, and the **operating, settlement, revenue, and reserve accounts** your program runs on. Lead creates and manages these during onboarding — you don't create them through an API, and today you see their activity through the delivered reports ([Daily Balance](/file-reference/reports/daily-balance), [Daily Activity](/file-reference/reports/daily-activity)) and through the `account_id` values that appear on payment objects and [Account Numbers](/products/account-number/overview).

These are the objects the [Object Model](/core-concepts/platform/object-model) page describes as the **core surface**: Lead executes here, which is why the data about them comes *from* Lead rather than being reported *by* you — the mirror image of [Customers & Accounts](/products/entity/overview), where you are the ledger of record. Read-only APIs for this surface are planned; until then, this page is the map: what each account type is for, and where its data shows up today.

## Core Surface

The foundational accounts you use to operate your program. Lead opens them for you during onboarding and manages their lifecycle; you read them through the online banking UI and the daily reports (API access<Badge color="blue">Coming Soon</Badge>), but you don't open or close them yourself. They come in three kinds:

* **FBOs**: Pooled "For Benefit Of" accounts that hold your customers' funds in aggregate.
* **Operating Accounts**: Our day-to-day DDAs for operating, revenue, reserve, settlement, network settlement, and so on.
* **Shadow Accounts**: Secondary sweep or placement accounts, such as IntraFi ICS.

### Account (core)

On the core surface, an **Account and its balance are the same object** — there is no separate core Balance. A core Account is one of your FBOs, operating DDAs, or shadow accounts, and it carries the balance. You read the balance from the [Daily Balance Report](/file-reference/reports/daily-balance) or the online banking UI.

* **Identifier:** `account_<id>`
* **Held by:** Your Lead or partner entity
* **Lifecycle:** Opened and managed by Lead

### Account Number

The routing number and account number pair that lets money reach an account on Lead's payment rails. A single core account can have many — for example, one for each end customer whose funds are pooled in an FBO.

Account Numbers hang off core accounts. Even when you assign one to an individual customer, it attaches to the core account — the customer is carried on the account number's `entity_id` — so an inbound payment lands on the core account first and is attributed to the customer from there.

* **Today:** An Account Number points to a core Account (via `account_id`).
* **Lifecycle:** Unassigned → active ↔ inactive → canceled. canceled is terminal; Account Numbers are never reused. See [Account Number Statuses](/products/account-number/statuses).
* **Controls:** Per-rail allow/block rules for incoming and outgoing payments are set at the Account Number level. See [Controls](/products/account-number/controls).

<Tip>
  All of Lead's money-movement APIs — ACH, wires, instant payments, and internal transfers — are indexed off the Account Number. You originate a payment by referencing an `account_number_id`, and Lead resolves the account it settles against.
</Tip>

### Transaction (core)

Debits and credits on a core account are generated by Lead — you don't report them. They appear in the [Daily Activity Report](/file-reference/reports/daily-activity) and the online banking UI.

### Core Accounts (today)

```text theme={null}
Entity (Lead or partner)
└── Account                   (account + balance combined)
    └── Account Number        (routable payment address)
```