Verification process

As required by payment industry regulations, account holders must pass verification checks before you can pay out to them. Account holders are generally required to provide more information after:

• They process their first payment.
• They advance to the next tier.

The following diagram illustrates the verification process when an account holder signs up to your platform.

1. The account holder provides information when they sign up on your platform, which Adyen uses to verify them.
2. Adyen checks if there are requirements that they need to meet, and runs the required verification based on the details they provided. If the account holder needs to provide more information, they must submit the information within a deadline. Adyen communicates all of these events and timelines through notification webhooks.
3. If the verification fails, the account holder can retry the verification by providing new or revised details. They can also provide additional documents.

If the verification is successful, the account holder may start receiving payouts. If verification fails, payouts will not be enabled.

Required information

Adyen determines the required information for checks based on:

• The account holder's legal entity type.
• The country they are operating in.
• Their current tier.
• The account holder's legal arrangements, if applicable.

To get a complete list of requirements, refer to verification requirements.

Owners, controllers, and signatories

As part of the checks for an organization, Adyen also verifies the identity of all individuals that are associated with the organization. We refer to these individuals as owners, controllers, and signatories. The table below describes the criteria for identifying them, and the minimum required number for each.

Who	Criteria	Required number of individuals
Owners	Individuals who directly or indirectly own 25% or more of the total shares, voting rights or other equity in the organization.	Between zero to four. Adyen requires information about all individuals that fit this criterion. If no one owns 25% or more of the organization, then your user must provide information about a controller.
Controllers	Any individuals who exercise ultimate effective control in making decisions for the whole company. If such an individual cannot be identified, then members of senior management must be identified as controllers.	At least one. Adyen requires information about all individuals that fit this criterion. For the United States of America it is required that at least one individual is identified.
Signatories	Officers or representatives who legally represent the organization towards Adyen and are authorised to enter a binding agreement with Adyen on behalf of their organization.	At least one. All signatories are required to be identified.

Deadlines for providing information

The account holder needs to provide the required information within a deadline. If the information is not sent to Adyen in a timely manner, the account holder status will be changed to inactive, and eventually suspended. Adyen informs your server of upcoming deadlines through notifications webhooks.

Deadline	Account holder status	Description
30 days after the account holder was required to provide information	Inactive	The account holder status is changed to Inactive. Payouts are temporarily disabled. You can still update the account holder data to proceed with the verification.
42 days after the account holder status was set to Inactive	Suspended	The account holder status is changed to Suspended. All payments that have not been paid out to the account holder are refunded. If you want to update the account holder data to continue with the verification, you must unsuspend the account holder first.

If an account holder cannot meet a deadline, you can choose to extend the deadline.

Notifications for upcoming deadlines

Seven days before the account holder inactivation or suspension, Adyen sends an ACCOUNT_HOLDER_UPCOMING_DEADLINE notification. You can get the actual date in the executionDate field, in YYYY-MM-DD format.

When you receive the notification, we recommend that you follow up and remind the account holder to submit the required information.

Example timeline for deadlines

For example, if a new account holder signs up, and processes their first payment on March 5th, they will be required to submit information for verification. The following deadlines apply:

• April 5th: Account holder status will be set to inactive.
• May 18th: Account holder status will be set to suspended.
  
  

If you want to collect information and continue the verification after May 18th, you must unsuspend the account holder.

Deadline extensions

The account holder may not be able to meet the inactivation or suspension deadline due to valid reasons. In these cases, you can extend the deadline for an additional one week.

You can only extend the deadline once during each deadline period: once during the account inactivation (T+30 days) and once during the suspension deadline (T+30+42 days).

When you extend the deadline for account holder inactivation, the counter for the suspension deadline starts after the extension. The new suspension deadline will be T+30+7+42 days.

Extend a deadline

You can extend the deadline in your Customer Area. Your Customer Area user must have the Merchant Extended Marketplace user role.

1. Log in to your Customer Area.
2. Go to Platform > Sub-merchants. Find the account holder and select Extend one week in the account holder overview.

The Extend one week button appears dimmed and is not available if you have previously extended the deadline.

Unsuspending an account holder

You can only unsuspend account holders if they did not fail any verification checks ( status FAILED).

When an account holder has been suspended because they didn't meet a deadline, unsuspending them resets the deadline. They have 42 days to provide information before they are suspended again. You can unsuspend them as many times as you need to. Once unsuspended, their status changes from Suspended to Inactive, allowing you to update their information.

To unsuspend an account holder, you can use Customer Area or make an API request.

Account holder statuses

The account holder status indicates whether an account holder can process payments and payouts. You can check the status of an account holder in the Customer Area, in the API response, and in webhook notifications.

Status	Updating data allowed?	Payments allowed?	Payouts allowed?	Description
Active				The default status of an active account holder, where payment processing and payouts are enabled. Payouts can be disabled when the account holder has not yet provided the required information for verification checks, or is required to provide additional information, for example in case of staggered verification.
Inactive				The account holder did not provide information required for verification checks within the 30-day time limit. When the account holder provides the required information, their status is restored to Active.
Suspended				The account holder did not provide information required for verification checks within the 6-week time  limit or they failed verification checks (checks.status FAILED). When an account holder is suspended, make sure to hide or remove the account holder from your platform to prevent processing of funds. Once suspended, you can only unsuspend or close the account holder if none of the verification checks have a failed status. When you unsuspend them, the status goes back to Inactive.
Closed				The account holder has been closed and no operations are allowed. This status is final.