> For clean Markdown of any page, append .md to the page URL.
> For a complete documentation index, see https://natural.ferndocs.com/guides/concepts/parties/llms.txt.
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# Parties

Parties represent the core identity unit in the Natural ecosystem and are used throughout the platform for managing Users, creating Agents, owning Wallets, delegating Payments authority to agents, and more. Our [Dashboard](/guides/platform/dashboard) product is the best way to interact with parties.

Natural supports two types of parties: **Individuals** and **Businesses**. Most developers will sign up as Businesses in order to invite their team members. Businesses also have domain-claiming capabilities that prevent another party from using the same domain. Both Individuals and Businesses have a suite of functionality that allows for payments on the platform.

Parties run through our [Compliance](/guides/overview/compliance) program (KYB for businesses, KYC for individuals) in order to comply with federal and state authorities.

## Canonical examples

Throughout our documentation, we use these three parties as canonical examples:

### Alice Developer (Business Party)

Alice is an AI agent developer who has integrated Natural into her AI property management platform. She:

* Uses agents to automate vendor and contractor payments
* Uses Natural to allow her agents to pay her customers

### Bruce Customer (Business Party)

Bruce runs a property management company and uses Alice's agents. He:

* Onboards as Alice's customer and delegates payment authority to Alice's agents
* Uses Alice's agents to pay vendors and contractors automatically

### Terri Contractor (Individual Party)

Terri is a plumber who receives payments from businesses. He:

* Is sent money by Alice's agents on behalf of Bruce
* Signs up to claim his first payment from Bruce

## Related concepts

* [Users](/guides/concepts/users) — User accounts associated with parties
* [Agents](/guides/concepts/agents) — Autonomous agents acting on behalf of parties
* [Payments](/guides/concepts/payments) — Transferring funds between parties

> Understanding parties in the Natural ecosystem