Verify Merchants

To enhance protection of your platform, payers, and merchants, WePay will be requiring additional information from new merchants. Merchants onboarding after September 1, 2020 will need to provide the following:

  • Year of formation
  • Country of formation
  • Operation in sanctioned countries
  • Location of non-domestic significant beneficiaries
  • Additional information for high-volume merchants

Note

Certain details may not be applicable to all merchants, depending on their type. Applicability will be addresses below

The above details must be collected in addition to the KYC information that WePay already requires. If your merchants submit KYC through the WePay merchant center, then your platform does not need to make any code changes.

If your platform leverages the deprecated KYC API, then you must implement the changes as outlined in the rest of this article.

Identify Applicability

 

The following must be collected from all merchants:

  • Year of formation
  • Country of formation

The following must be collected from merchants if your platform is of type Small and Medium Business:

  • Sanctioned countries of operation

The following must be collected from merchants if your platform is of type Crowdfunding:

  • Location of all non-domestic beneficiaries

All applicable details must be collected upfront, during onboarding. If you are not sure which designation is your platform, please reach out to your WePay account manager.

To re-iterate, if your platform leverages the KYC iFrame or hosted onboarding, WePay will notify your merchants, and collect the new required details for you.

If your platform leverages the deprecated KYC API, please integrate new KYC API parameters by September 1, 2020.

Integrate New KYC API Parameters

 

You can find the full KYC API reference here. The table below highlights the KYC API parameters to integrate and provide the new information WePay requires up-front.

Detail Parameter(s) Type
Year of formation Integer
Country of formation business.country_of_formation String
Sanctioned countries of operation business.sanctioned_countries_operation Array
Location of non-domestic beneficiaries* organization.significant_beneficiaries.non_domestic_locations Array

*

The API refers to significant beneficiaries, but it is important to note that this information must be collected for all beneficiaries.

SMB Examples

In this example, the merchant does not have any operations in sanctioned countries.

{
    "business": {
        "year_of_formation": 1899,
        "country_of_formation": "US",
        "sanctioned_countries_operation": null
    }
}

In this example, the merchant does have operations in sanctioned countries .

{
    "business": {
        "year_of_formation": 2009,
        "country_of_formation": "CA",
        "sanctioned_countries_operation": [
            "sy",
            "cu"
        ]
    }
}

Crowdfunding Examples

In this example, the organization which is crowdfunding has no significant beneficiaries outside the base country (US in this case).

{
    "organization": {
        "year_of_formation": 1991,
        "country_of_formation": "US",
        "significant_beneficiaries": {
            "non_domestic_locations": null
        }
    }
}

In this example, the organization is crowdfunding has significant beneficiaries outside the base country (US in this case).

{
    "organization": {
        "year_of_formation": 1991,
        "country_of_formation": "US",
        "significant_beneficiaries": {
            "non_domestic_locations": [
                "CA"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Verify High-Volume NGOs & Charities

 

In addition to the above requirements for new merchants, WePay will begin collecting additional verification details from all high-volume merchants which are NGOs or chartieis. A high-volume merchant is any account with a Total Processing Volume (TPV) exceeding $1.2 million in a rolling 12-month period.

WePay will send email notifications to merchants with UI for them to provide the required information according to the following schedule:

  1. Merchant processes $500,000.00 TPV in a 12-month period
  2. Merchant processes $1 million TPV in a 12-month period
  3. Merchant processes $1.2 million TPV in a 12-month period

At each step above, WePay will send an email to the merchant with a redirect to WePay where the merchant can provide the required information,

If the merchant does not provide the required post-onboarding information by the time the merchant hits step 3, settlements will be paused.

If the merchant has still not provided the required post-onboarding information 30 days after settlements have been paused, then incoming payments will be paused.

At this point, the flow will be the same as the Account Lifecycle flow at the point where KYC documents have been required for 30 days.