Your users' legal entity type and operating country determine the required verification information you need to collect from your users. You can use Adyen's Hosted onboarding or build your own UI to collect information from your users.
The timing of when you need to collect this information depends on the verification type that applies to your case. After Adyen receives the information, the verification process starts automatically.
You can choose from the following types of onboarding:
- Hosted onboarding: this option involves implementing fewer API calls and allows you to redirect the user to an Adyen page. On this page, Adyen manages the user onboarding flow and user interface (UI).
- API-only onboarding: with this option, you need to develop your own UI and make API calls to gather and send user data to Adyen. This onboarding type gives you complete control over the user journey within your platform's environment.
Hosted onboarding
Hosted onboarding Postman flows
You can try out Postman flows in your private workspace to test all the required API calls with your own credentials. Select your business model: marketplace or platform.
Hosted onboarding is our recommended solution for collecting the information needed to onboard your users. This option requires less effort to set up because your users provide their information directly on a page hosted by Adyen. You only need to make a few API calls to the Legal Entity Management API (LEM API) to create legal entities and account holders for your users and redirect them to the Adyen-hosted page.
If necessary, you can customize the theme, the language, and the user permissions of the hosted onboarding page.
If your users need to sign PCI security questionnaires or accept Adyen's Terms of Service, these steps are included on the hosted onboarding page. You can configure the page settings to select the relevant PCI questionnaires for users to sign.
Supported countries/regions
You can onboard the following legal entity types:
- Organization
- Individual
- Sole proprietorship
- Trusts (Only in Australia)
You can use hosted onboarding in the following locations where your users are operating.
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Greece
Guernsey
Hong Kong (beta)
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Monaco
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom (including Isle of Man & Jersey)
United States (including Puerto Rico)
Instant bank account verification
For some locations and legal entity types, your users can choose to instantly verify their bank account details in your hosted onboarding page. They are prompted to log in to their online banking environment and confirm their account details. Their bank account is then verified within seconds without them needing to provide a bank statement.
Supported countries/regions
This feature is currently only available for the following locations and legal entity types.
| Country/region | Individuals | Organizations |
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To see an example of the entire hosted onboarding flow, you can watch a video here:
API-only onboarding
With the API-only onboarding, you need to build the UI for your platform where you collect data from your users. You then need to submit the collected data to Adyen by making requests to the Legal Entity Management API and the Configuration API.
To speed up building your integration, you can embed the Onboarding components into your UI to let your users enter their data. The component then uses the entered data to create the relevant resource. This means you don't need to implement the API call to create the resource yourself.
Supported countries/regions
You can onboard users operating in any of the countries and regions where Adyen for Platforms is supported.
Onboarding versioning
Here are some things to know about Legal Entity Management API (LEM API) versions:
- The latest API version is regularly updated with changes and additions, eliminating the need for you to update your code.
- Forward compatibility is not supported. For example, a legal entity created in LEM API v3 cannot be updated using LEM API v2.
- We will notify you if a new API version is released or an old version is discontinued.
- It is possible to pilot the release candidate versions.
- Any changes to the LEM API are described in our release notes.
Breaking and non-breaking changes to the LEM API
We regularly update the Legal Entity Management API with non-breaking changes, so you can receive updates without needing to re-integrate with Adyen.
Sometimes, we need to make breaking changes in order to:
- Introduce new onboarding features.
- Enhance onboarding performance and stability.
- Ensure compliance with new regulatory requirements.
When a breaking change is necessary, a new version of the LEM API is released. If there are critical security or compliance changes required, these are first released in test environments four weeks before they are available in live. Adyen notifies you about these changes in Balance Platform Customer Area.
LEM API release schedule
We aim to release new stable versions of the Legal Entity Management API and Hosted onboarding regularly. We recommend you upgrade to the latest API version as soon as possible. Although older versions can still be used, they do not receive any additional updates.
Before we release a new stable version of the LEM API, we offer a preview API-only release candidate version. Note that this version does not offer hosted onboarding support.
The release candidate version is subject to change based on feedback received from our merchants who are willing to pilot. The release candidate API version provides early access to new features and improvements planned for the latest stable version.
To get access to the release candidate version, contact your Adyen account manager.
Sunsetting LEM API versions and upgrading to new versions
As part of our API lifecycle management, we may need to sunset older versions of the Legal Entity Management API. This means that after the specified sunset date, you can no longer use that version of the API. We aim to give you enough notice of the sunset time to allow for integration with the new API versions.
If you use hosted onboarding, remaining compliant requires no additional effort on your part.
If you use API-only onboarding, you will need to upgrade to the latest API version before the sunset date of the version that you are currently using.