Digital Onboarding
A client is a business who uses J.P. Morgan Payments, referred to here as Merchant Services, for payment processing features on your platform. Before your client can start using Merchant Services, the client must go through the onboarding process.
To onboard a client to Merchant Services, you need to collect from them:
- Basic business and personal information. This includes details of an individual who can represent the client as a
party. - A form of identification, such as an Employer Identification Number (EIN).
- Answers to due diligence questions served by the API.
To make life easier for your clients, you can stagger the process by taking the most basic information first, and updating over time. After all of the information required is ready, you can send the final request for client verifications and due diligence checks to begin.
In order to process payments and receive settlement payouts, your client must be fully onboarded.
What happens to client data during the onboarding process
As your client completes the onboarding process, your platform passes the client's business and personal information to J.P. Morgan.
The data you send on your client's behalf is used by J.P. Morgan to meet its obligations to financial laws and client safety. This process is called KYC (Know Your Customer).
KYC can be described in two stages:
- Customer Identification Program (CIP): By law, J.P. Morgan is required to establish the identity of its clients. The CIP process verifies the identity of those clients, and their owners or representatives. Clients may need to provide documents to help form a reasonable belief of their identity, for example, a government-issued document such as a business license or driver's license.
- Additional Due Diligence: Further information about your client is collected to confirm their business activities, and to check for risks such as doing business with sanctioned countries, or behavior that has characteristics of money laundering.
In the Digital Onboarding APIs, use the Clients resource to retrieve follow-up questions you may need to ask your clients and to collect documentation and attestations that may be required.