As required by payment industry regulations, Adyen must verify the users in your platform before you can process payments, pay out their funds, and offer financial products to them. These verification checks are also called Know Your Customer (KYC) checks.
During this process, Adyen verifies that your users provide accurate information about their businesses. Based on the results of the verification checks, Adyen decides if a user can perform any action on your platform. These actions are known as capabilities .
To see whether a user can use a specific capability on your platform, check the capability settings.
On this page, we describe:
When does Adyen verify users
Adyen verifies users before allowing them to use capabilities on your platform. The following events all trigger verification checks.
Requesting capabilities for your user
In the design phase, you set the default capabilities for your platform. These capabilities are requested every time you onboard a new user and create an account holder for them. Adyen verifies the user and if they successfully complete the verification checks, they are allowed to use the capabilities.
If a user needs a specific capability that is not requested by default, you must request the additional capability. In some cases, this requires more verification.
When users change their data
When users change their data after they are already allowed to use capabilities, Adyen verifies them again.
If the updated data fails verification checks, Adyen may set a verification deadline by which the user needs to resolve the issues. The user is allowed to continue using the capabilities while the verification deadline is active.
If the user does not resolve the verification issues in a timely manner, their capabilities will be disallowed.
Note that balancePlatform.accountHolder.updated are only triggered for capability-related changes to the account holder. Data changes to the legal entity of the account holder do not trigger webhooks.
Periodic data reviews required by Adyen
Adyen occasionally requires your users to review and confirm that their data is up-to-date. You also can choose to proactively request the data review for your user. You may want to do this if your user does not engage with your platform on a regular basis.
When a data review is required:
-
Adyen first verifies the data of the user. This data includes information about their business and all entities associated with it, such as their ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) and signatories. If there are no verification errors, the user must only review and confirm their data.
-
Adyen sets a verification deadline by which the user must confirm their data and update it (if needed). If there are any errors from the verification checks, the user must also resolve them. If you proactively request the data review, Adyen still provides a verification deadline during which the user can continue using their capabilities that were allowed.
-
If the user data was updated, Adyen verifies the updated information again. While the deadline is active, the user can continue using their capabilities that were allowed prior to the review request.
-
If the user does not confirm the data and resolve any verification errors, their capabilities will be disallowed. The review is only considered finalized when the user has confirmed the data and resolved all verification errors.
Verification deadlines
Verification deadlines are only available in v3 and v4 of the Legal Entity Management API.
For the events described above that trigger additional verification checks, Adyen may set a deadline to give the user enough time to resolve verification issues.
Users are allowed to continue using the capabilities while the deadline is active. To see the verification deadlines, you can either:
- View the details of the account holder in your Customer Area.
- Make a GET /accountHolders/id request.
The diagrams in the next section show the process and the corresponding capability verification statuses and capability settings.
How the verification process works
In the following diagrams, you can see the process for events that trigger verification checks and the relationship between capability verification statuses and capability settings.