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Overview

Batch merchant matching allows you to efficiently match a large volume of merchants to Locations and Counterparties in Spade’s Database. You can submit up to 50,000 merchants in a single request and retrieve the matching results once processing is complete. In this guide, we’ll use the /batches/merchants/match POST endpoint to submit a batch of merchants, the /batches/{batchId} GET endpoint to check the batch status, and the /batches/{batchId}/results GET endpoint to retrieve the results.

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1. Submit Your Batch of Merchants

import requests

merchants = [
    {
        "requestId": "unique_id_123",
        "merchantName": "Amazon",
        "address": "1234 W 5th Ave",
        "city": "New York",
        "region": "NY",
        "country": "USA",
        "postalCode": "10001"
    },
    # ... more merchants ...
]

response = requests.post(
    "https://east.sandbox.spade.com/batches/merchants/match",
    json={"merchants": merchants},
    headers={"X-Api-Key": "<Your API Key Here>"}
)

batch_id = response.json()["batchId"]
print(f"Batch submitted with ID: {batch_id}")

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2. Receive Completion Notification or Check Status

You have two options to determine when your batch is complete:
  • Option A: Receive a callback notification (recommended) Include a callbackUrl in your batch submission to receive an automated notification when processing completes.
  • Option B: Poll for status Periodically check the batch status endpoint.
For detailed implementation of both methods, including callback authentication and handling, refer to the Batch Enrichment Guide. Both batch endpoints use the same callback mechanism.

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3. Retrieve the Results

Once the batch is complete, retrieve the results. 
response = requests.get(
    f"https://east.sandbox.spade.com/batches/{batch_id}/results",
    headers={"X-Api-Key": "<Your API Key Here>"}
)

results = response.json()["matches"]

for match in results:
    print(f"Request ID: {match['requestId']}")
    print(f"Counterparty Name: {match['counterparty']['name']}")
    print(f"Spade's Counterparty ID: {match['counterparty']['id']}")
    print(f"Merchant Similarity Score: {match['counterparty']['similarity']}")
    print(f"Location Similarity Score: {match['location']['similarity']}")

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Using the Similarity Scores

We provide two similarity scores for each match; a counterparty.similarity and location.similarity. The counterparty.similarity score is a measure of how similar the merchant name in the request is to the counterparty name in the response. The location.similarity score is a measure of how similar the merchant address in the request is to the location address in the response. The scores are between 75 and 100, where 100 is a perfect match. We recommend experimenting with the threshold for what constitutes a “good” match for your use case.

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Error Handling

There are two classes of errors you will want to handle. The first is the errors you may encounter when submitting the batch via the /batches/transactions/cards/enrich endpoint. The second class of errors can be returned as individual payloads in the results array of the /batches/{batchId}/results endpoint. For example, you may see a 400 in the statusCode for a single request in the batch if the request body was missing a required field, while other requests in the batch return a 200 statusCode. In the event that a request resulted in an error, the correspond entry in the results array will contain an errors object. The errors object contains an array of objects explaining what caused the error to occur. Here’s an example of what the errors object could look like: 
errors:
    {
        'merchantName': ['This field is required.']
    }
Note that even in the event of an error, the result will still contain the merchantId key. You can use the merchantId to determine which payload within your input batch resulted in an error.. See our enrichment guide for more details on handling errors from our API.

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Handling Non-Matches

It’s possible that there is either no counterparty and/or location match for a merchant given the provided input. In these cases, you can still expect a response object in the matches array. However, the counterparty and location will be null for the corresponding merchant.

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Best Practices

For best practices regarding unique IDs, status polling, timeouts, and error handling, please refer to the Batch Enrichment Guide.