SmartVista uses accounts as separate entities to track the movement of funds and commitments as transactions occur. Their function is to reflect every detail of card-related business so that it could be passed on to the accounting component of the Core Banking System, and also to keep customer account balances and status updated with those changes that first become known to the Core Banking System.

To address all these 'operational accounting' needs, SmartVista holds and maintains several types of Customer Accounts (for Issuer customers and merchants) and 'General Ledger' accounts for all the Institution entities held in the system.

Together, SmartVista accounts form an Account Tree for each Principal Institution, or, rather, two such trees: one for the Issuer side, and the other for the Acquirer side, where customer account hierarchies are always linked to a specific Agent Institution and Agent level GL accounts are used to pass postings from the Institution level so that inter-institution clearing may occur in a centralised way.