Skip to main content
Each service provider returns financial data with slightly different conventions — signage, status names, and category labels. Meld normalizes these into a single consistent shape so your code does not need provider-specific branches. This page is for developers consuming Meld’s APIs who want to understand the normalized values and the rules behind them. Raw provider responses are still available in the serviceProviderDetails field on every endpoint and in the Activity Log.

​
Balance signage

Balance signage is generally positive for all account types — including loan, mortgage, and credit accounts, where a positive balance indicates the amount the customer owes.

​
Transaction signage

Service providers use different signage for deposits vs. withdrawals. Meld standardizes to:
  • Positive — money has moved out of the account. Includes withdrawals and debits.
  • Negative — money has moved into the account. Includes deposits.

​
Investment types

For both investment holdings and investment transactions, Meld normalizes the investment type in the response.
  • Investment holdings: STOCK, MUTUALFUND, CASH, OTHER, REALESTATE, ETF, DERIVATIVE, DIGITALASSET.
  • Investment transactions: SELL, BUY, CANCEL, CASH, OTHER, TRANSFER.

​
Transaction status

Transactions have one of the following statuses:
  • Pending — All transactions start as PENDING. A pending transaction has been approved but not yet fully processed.
  • Posted — PENDING transactions move to POSTED within a few days, typically one to five business days, with a rare two-week maximum.
  • Expired — On rare occasions, PENDING transactions are cancelled and stop appearing in provider responses. When this occurs, Meld marks them EXPIRED.
When updating transaction data, fetch the last 14 days to capture status and amount changes. After two weeks, transactions almost never change.

​
Transaction categories

While providers group transactions into their own categories, Meld also normalizes transaction categories across providers.
For the complete provider-to-Meld category mapping, refer to the account transactions reference and the Bank Linking API reference.