# Partners

A partner represents a party involved in a transaction, either as a payer (sending money) or a beneficiary (receiving money). Each partner is assigned a unique ID.

A partner can be a business or an individual. The same partner record can act as a payer in one transaction and a beneficiary in another — the role is determined by the collection or channel it is used in, not by the partner record itself.

Partners are the first resource you create in most integrations, because collections and channels both reference them.

## How partners relate to other resources

- A [collection](/products/collections/v0/concepts/collections) or [channel](/products/collections/v0/concepts/channels) names a payer and a beneficiary.
- Every [transaction](/products/collections/v0/concepts/transactions) can be filtered by `payer_id` or `beneficiary_id`.


## API operations

- [Create a partner](/products/collections/v0/api/collections/partners/createpartner): Add a new business or individual to your system.
- [List partners](/products/collections/v0/api/collections/partners/listpartners): View all existing partners. You can filter this list by `id` or `type` (business or individual).
- [Get a partner by ID](/products/collections/v0/api/collections/partners/getpartnerbyid): Retrieve specific information about a partner using their ID.
- [Update a partner](/products/collections/v0/api/collections/partners/updatepartner): Modify the details of an existing partner.