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

# Counterparty

> Whoever is being paid, saved once and reused.

A **counterparty** is whoever money goes to — a supplier, a contractor, a seller, or your own sub-client's own customer.

You save one once, with the details money needs to reach them, and reuse it for every later payment. Nothing has to be re-entered, and a mistake is corrected in one place rather than on every transfer.

## What it holds

Two things: **who they are** — a person or a company, with the identifying details the rail requires — and **where money reaches them**, which is either a bank account or a wallet address.

Which of those two it carries decides the rail, and the counterparty is where that name lives: a bank account is saved as `ACH` or `WIRE`, a wallet as `WALLET`. Everything downstream — what a payment costs and how fast it lands — follows from that one choice. See [Rail](/overview/model/rail).

## Why it is saved rather than sent

Paying the same supplier ten times should not mean sending their bank details ten times. Each send is a chance to mistype an account number, and a wrong number on a payment is not always recoverable. Saving the counterparty once moves that risk to a single moment you can check.

## What it is called elsewhere

In the API reference a counterparty is a **recipient**. The word is the same idea throughout — see [The recipient object](/reference/recipients/the-recipient-object).

<Note>
  A counterparty is **not** a sub-client. A sub-client is your customer, whose money it is. A counterparty is who that money is going to, and Kira does not verify them the way it verifies a sub-client.
</Note>