## 6. Working With Merchants & Payees (Counterparties)

Integration Partners manage only merchants that Compliance has assigned to them.

### 6.1 Creating a Payee (Counterparty)

To create a Payee on behalf of a merchant,Partners call: `POST /finance/v1/counterparty`

- Counterparties are payees belonging to a merchant, not to the partner
- Validation and onboarding rules are handled internally
- Theropay does not perform external bank account validation at this stage.