This guide gets you up and running with Formance as fast as possible. By the end, you'll have moved money in a Formance Cloud sandbox using the the command line.
Install the CLI
Install fctl, the Formance command-line tool:
brew install formancehq/tap/fctlVerify the installation:
fctl versionLogin & Create a Sandbox
Authenticate with Formance Cloud (this opens a browser):
fctl loginList the regions available to your account:
fctl cloud regions listPick a region ending in -sandbox for a free development environment, then create the stack:
fctl stack create playground --region=<REGION_ID>If you omit --region, fctl prompts you interactively from the same list.
The sandbox typically provisions in a few minutes — exact time varies with cloud capacity. It includes Ledger, Payments, Auth, and Gateway modules ready to use.
Verify your sandbox is ready and get your stack ID:
fctl stack show --name=playgroundLook for the ID field in the output:
# Information
ID | ecwj | ← This is your stack ID
Name | playground |
Region | eu-sandbox |
Status | ACTIVE |You'll need this stack ID for the next commands.
Send Your First Transaction
Send $1.00 from world to alice:
fctl ledger send world alice 100 USD/2 --ledger=quickstart --stack=<STACK_ID>world is a built-in account that can go negative. This is useful for creating funds out of thin air to get started quickly. In production, you'd fund accounts through actual payment flows instead.
USD/2 means USD with 2 decimal places, so 100 represents $1.00. This is how Formance handles monetary precision without floating-point errors.
Check the balances:
fctl ledger volumes list --ledger=quickstart --stack=<STACK_ID>You should see world with a negative balance (-100) and alice with a positive balance (100). That's double-entry bookkeeping in action!
Congratulations! 🎉 You just executed your first transaction on a programmable ledger.