Getting Started

Atlas is a global payments infrastructure for African and emerging-market businesses, enabling them to collect and settle in multiple currencies. You can interact with Atlas using the Atlas UI or the API depending on your preference or technical level. To use Atlas, you must create an account and complete your compliance requirements.

What you can do with Atlas

Collect Payments

Collect payments in multiple currencies using country-specific funding rails.

Disburse Money

Transfer funds from your Atlas account to bank accounts.

Create Virtual Accounts

Create dedicated virtual accounts for your customers tied to your business account.

Integrate with your Business

Integrate Atlas into your businesses and existing application using the Atlas API.

How to use the Atlas documentation

The Atlas documentation was designed to ensure that you get the best developer experience while reading the docs. Below are some of the features you should be aware of.

Embedded pages

Some documentation pages on Atlas require context from other pages. Normally, URLs to the required pages would be attached to the appropriate anchor text. However, this takes you away from the main page and breaks your focus when you have to switch between tabs.

To solve this, we introduced embedded pages which are distinguished from normal by a double underline instead of a single underline. When you hover over a piece of text that has a double underline, it opens up a mini-version of the linked page on the page you are currently on, enabling you to peruse through the contents without leaving the page.

Embedded media

There are multiple instances in the documentation where a visual reference can explain a concept or help you locate some functionality on the UI better than text alone. Adding images to all those parts can be redundant or visually overstimulating in some cases, especially cases associated with different variations of the same image.

To solve this, we embed certain images in the relevant text. When you hover over text with dotted lines, a video or image appears inline, allowing you to see exactly what's being described.

Note

This doesn't and is not meant to replace the actual images in the docs.

Embedded glossary

Some pages in the documentation use terms that may not be immediately familiar. Instead of requiring you to search for definitions elsewhere, we added an embedded glossary. Terms with a dashed underline have definitions attached to them. Hover over any such term to see its meaning in a small popup, keeping you focused on the content you're reading.

Multi language codeblocks

Code examples throughout the documentation are available in multiple programming languages. Rather than showing every language at once, we use tabbed code blocks that let you switch between languages like JavaScript, Python, Go, PHP, and Java. Select the tab for your preferred language to see the relevant implementation without scrolling past code that isn't relevant to you.

API playground

Each API endpoint in the documentation includes an interactive playground where you can test requests directly from your browser. The playground displays the request and response schema based on the API specification, allowing you to experiment with API calls without switching to external tools like Postman or cURL.