Core banking
Payments & four-eyes
The payments module moves money the way a bank actually has to: every instruction passes through separation of duties, sanctions screening and a real settlement that posts to the ledger. It is the clearest place to see that the platform enforces controls rather than merely displaying them.
The life of a payment
An instruction moves through a fixed set of states, and it cannot skip one.
- Draft — a maker creates the instruction. It moves no money yet.
- Pending approval — submitted for a second person to check. The maker cannot approve their own.
- Screening — beneficiary and details are checked against sanctions lists; a hit holds the payment.
- Processing then Settled — on approval the funds are debited and the settlement posts to the double-entry ledger.
Why maker-checker is more than a screen
The rule that the drafter cannot be the approver is enforced by a constraint in the database, not just hidden buttons in the interface. Even a direct write that tried to set the same person as both maker and checker would be rejected. That is the difference between a control and a courtesy.
When a payment settles, it does not just flip a status. It debits the source account and posts a balanced pair of entries — a cash debit and a clearing credit — to an append-only ledger, so the money movement and its accounting record can never disagree.
Good to know
A payment you drafted will show no approve button — that is the four-eyes rule working, not a bug.
The settled payment links to its ledger journal, so you can trace the exact entries it created.