# Core concepts (/docs/get-started/core-concepts)

Every resource you create in Monime lives inside a **Space**, is acted on by a **Monimeer**, moves money through a **Financial Account**, and can be traced back to its origin through the **Ownership Graph**.

- [**Space**](#space)

  The organizational boundary that isolates a business and its data.

- [**Monimeer**](#monimeer)

  The personal identity that works across one or more Spaces.

- [**Financial Account**](#financial-account)

  The ledger container where money is held and moved.

- [**Ownership Graph**](#ownership-graph)

  The lineage that traces every resource back to its origin.

## How they fit together

A Monimeer can belong to several Spaces. Everything a Space does with money flows through its Financial Accounts, and every resource records where it came from in its Ownership Graph.

```mermaid
flowchart TB
    M["Monimeer<br/>personal identity"] -- "member of" --> S["Space<br/>organizational boundary"]
    M -- creates --> T["Access token<br/>scoped by roles"]
    T -- "acts within" --> S
    S -- owns --> FA["Financial Accounts<br/>one currency each"]
    FA -- "records every" --> R["Payments, payouts,<br/>transfers"]
    R -. "traced by" .-> OG["Ownership Graph"]
```

## Space

A **Space** is the foundational unit of isolation in Monime. It represents an organizational entity — a business, company, merchant, platform, government institution or NGO — and everything associated with its payment operations and financial identity.

- **Isolation by design**

  Every resource — payment, transfer, customer, financial account — is scoped to a single Space. No data leaks or overlaps across Spaces.

- **Environment boundaries**

  Each Space can have environments, like test and live, for safe development and deployment workflows.

- **Operational identity**

  All configurations, policies and memberships are defined within the scope of a Space.

- **Segregated ledgers**

  Fund tracking, settlement and balances are kept separate across Spaces, for legal, financial and operational clarity.

> **Note:** Think of a Space as the “tenant” in Monime’s multi-tenant architecture.

## Monimeer

A **Monimeer** is a personal user account — a developer, operator or member of a finance team. Unlike Spaces, Monimeers are personal and global across Monime.

- **Cross-Space access**

  A Monimeer can be a member of multiple Spaces, with different roles in each.

- **Personal access tokens**

  API access is authenticated with Personal Access Tokens (PATs), which carry permissions.

### Role-scoped authorization

Monime uses a dual-layer permission system to control what a Monimeer can do within a Space:

1. **Dashboard access** is determined solely by the roles (permission sets) assigned to the Monimeer in that Space.
2. **API access** is determined by the intersection of the Monimeer's roles in the Space and the roles assigned to the access token they create.

API access tokens can never exceed the permissions of their creator, but they can be scoped down for security. For example, a Monimeer with full `transfer` management rights in the dashboard can create a token with read-only `transfer` access, but cannot create a token with `webhook` management if they lack that dashboard role.

> **Note:** This model separates who the user is (the Monimeer) from the organization they operate in (the Space), which enables powerful collaboration scenarios.

## Financial Account

A **Financial Account** is an internal ledger abstraction that represents where money is held, routed or reconciled. It is the heart of money management in a Space: every financial operation — payment, disbursement, internal transfer and so on — is scoped to a financial account.

- **Currency bound**

  Each account holds money in a single currency.

- **Space scoped**

  Accounts operate within a Space's secure boundaries.

- **Real time**

  Provides a real-time, point-in-time and historical view of its balance.

- **Transparent**

  Tracks every fund movement with complete transparency.

- **Deeply programmatic**

  Fully controllable through the API.

> **Note:** Financial accounts abstract away the complexity of real bank accounts while staying closely modeled on real-world money flow.

## Ownership Graph

The **Ownership Graph** captures the complete lineage of any object in Monime. Every financial resource carries an immutable chain of relationships that traces back to the object that created it, answering questions like:

- What triggered this transaction?
- Who initiated the original action?
- What was the business context?
- How did we get here?

Each node names its `owner`, so the chain can be followed from a payment back to the API request that started it:

```json title="Ownership graph of a payment"
{
  "ownershipGraph": {
    "owner": {
      "id": "pmt-k6Em1Aap25VZ8oWg7ajhxHX3JqF",
      "type": "payment",
      "metadata": {
        "channel": "momo",
        "provider": "m17"
      },
      "owner": {
        "id": "sps-k6Em1aAap254VXg6fhxk9HX3JqF",
        "type": "checkout_session",
        "metadata": {
          "orderId": "ord-3n4o5p6q7r8s"
        },
        "owner": {
          "id": "arq-k6Em12r5VZ8oW9r9Xh7xsH3J4qF",
          "type": "api_request",
          "metadata": {
            "endpoint": "/v1/checkout-sessions",
            "subjectId": "acc-k6Em15VsZ8go5W9lX2h7dxsJ4qF",
            "ipAddress": "192.168.1.100"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
```

The same idea applies to every chain of resources, for example a payment code:

```text title="Lineage of a payment code"
Payment Code
└── Payment (when someone pays)
    └── Financial Transaction (when the payment is processed)
        └── Fee Transaction (when your service fee is taken)
```

## Next steps

- [**Platform Guides**](/docs/dashboard-guide)

  Set up your Monimeer account and Space, and manage access tokens.

- [**Developer Resources**](/docs/developer-resources/api-basics)

  Tools, guides and references to support your development work.