Staggered onboarding

Datman provides two ways for collecting verification information from your merchants:

• Upfront: your merchant completes full verification when you onboard them, before they reach any processing limit.
• Staggered: only the minimum required verification information is collected before your merchant starts taking payments. Additional information is collected when the merchant's processed amount reaches the limit of their current tier.

In both cases, your merchant can take payments from the start. What depends on verification is payouts: Datman pays out a merchant's funds to their bank account only after the merchant has submitted all the required information for their tier.

We recommend collecting all the verification information upfront, because your merchant then never has their payouts blocked at a later stage. Staggered onboarding gives you and your merchants a faster time to market, because merchants who process smaller amounts complete fewer verification checks before they can be paid out.

Upfront onboardingCopy Anchor Link

In an upfront onboarding process, you collect all of the required verification information when you onboard your merchant: bank account details, personal details, business details, ID documents and supporting bank documents. The information is verified after you create the merchant. You will not need to ask your merchant for additional information when they reach a higher tier.

Staggered onboardingCopy Anchor Link

In a staggered onboarding process, you collect additional required information from your merchant only when needed. Tiers determine what additional information needs to be collected and verified by Datman to continue payouts for the merchant. When a merchant processes a higher amount than the limit of their current tier, they are moved to the next tier.

When a merchant is moved to a higher tier, Datman sends a webhook to the webhookUrl you set when you created the merchant, and informs the merchant by email. From that moment:

1. The merchant can continue to take payments, but their funds are not paid out until they submit the additional information and Datman verifies it.
2. The merchant usually has 30 days to submit the information. Datman usually gives a verification date for this.
3. If the information is not submitted in time, payouts are blocked. If it is still not submitted after 60 days, payments are blocked too.

Note that a quickly increasing processing volume can lead to a merchant's account being blocked sooner.

We recommend that you listen to these webhooks and inform your merchant yourself, so that they can submit the information before their payouts are affected.

TiersCopy Anchor Link

Tiers are determined by the total amount your merchant processes until they are fully verified. There are three tiers.

The tier is returned in the verification_tier field of the account status. In the portfolio summary, merchants on Tier 1 are counted in up_to1000, and merchants on Tier 2 in up_to5000.

Processing volume is not the only factor in a merchant being moved to a higher tier. Based on the merchant's industry (merchant category code), Datman can ask for additional details and run additional checks at different stages.

Tier limits are calculated in the local currency of the merchant's country or region.

See alsoCopy Anchor Link

• Verification process
• Verification statuses
• Manage merchant details