how to open more merchant accounts in less time

How to Open More

Merchant Accounts in

Less Time

We will send the recording

(after the webinar)

Stick around for a demo

We help merchant

acquirers open more

accounts in less time with

onboarding automation

A little about us:

Some of Our Customers

5 / 29Agreement Express Onboarding Automation Software

Meet the Speakers

6/ 29Agreement Express Onboarding Automation Software

What We’ll Cover Today


1. How Merchant Acquiring has changed in the last four years

2. Why onboarding is the focus of Merchant Acquiring strategy today

3. The biggest growth obstacles

4. How to crush the obstacles and optimize the process to open more

merchant accounts

When we first started down this road four

years ago, onboarding was a distant

priority for merchant acquirers…

Merchant Acquirers Were Up Against A Lot


• Disrupted by new technology entrants

like Square, Stripe, Intuit

• Regulated to the teeth

• Impacted by increase in fraud

• Stretched by EMV migration

preparation

They had bigger fish to fry

Merchant Acquirers were getting slammed

So What Made Them Prioritize?


1. The Squares of the world started to

eat their market share

2. Fraud was increasing and so were

the manual checks

3. Backlog was building

4. And merchant quality was

decreasing

5. Their businesses weren’t growing

as fast as they needed to

Square: what made onboarding important again


1. Opened merchant accounts in 15

minutes, NOT 3-5 days

2. Began working with bigger and

bigger merchants

3. Forced traditional merchant

acquirers to rethink their customer

experience

And then…

Onboarding became a race

“80% of financial institutions have

made onboarding automation their #1

priority

– 3x more than any other initiative.”

CEB Tower Group

14 / 29

But there’s a

BIG mountain

to climb

Most Common Onboarding Challenges


1. Paper-based or partially digital application collections

2. Sending forms back and forth to correct errors

3. Physically sending the application around for ink signatures

4. Backlogs in Underwriting’s work queues

5. Errors in application made by merchant or sales person

6. Manual verifications and checks for KYC and compliance

7. Sending applications to underwriter for final approval

8. Communicating final approval to the merchant

9. Zero visibility into bottlenecks throughout the entire process

10. No audit trail

5. Errors in application made by

merchant or sales person


• The most under identified problem in an onboarding process

• It’s commonly misunderstood when the onboarding process really starts

• The onboarding process is usually longer than anticipated

6. Manual verifications and

checks for KYC and compliance


• When number 5 is addressed the volume of applications increases

BUT…

• Now the bottleneck has moved from Sales to the Back Office

• So the next step is to automate the KYC and Compliance process

Steps for Optimizing the

Onboarding Process

(How to catch up)

Here’s how you do that:

1. Gather feedback from sales, merchants, and underwriters

2. Follow an application through the entire process

3. Then, create a workflow diagram of that process

4. Explore the exceptions to “the happy path” (what kinds of variables

does your business need to account for?)

5. Understand which client data is nice to have versus necessary

1. Map Your Onboarding Processes


Look for these things in the feedback you’ve gathered from your groups:

1. Double entry of data

2. Common errors that require revision

3. Errors in document package assembly

2. Identify Bottlenecks


1. Digital forms and signatures

2. Data validation (I.E.: Dates or Syntax)

3. Data transposition

4. Document package assembly

5. Automatic TIN validation

6. ID verification

3. Automate What You Can


1. Map your onboarding and underwriting process to identify bottle necks

and create your definition of the “happy path”

2. Eliminate as many obstacles to the “happy path” by removing

unnecessary complexities within your applications

3. Create a consistent, repeatable process you can audit

4. Automate manual checks where possible to increase

underwriting efficiency

Summary: how to open more merchant accounts


• Reduce merchant onboarding time by 70%

• Reduce application errors to <5%

• Automate underwriting

The Impact of Onboarding Automation

Product Roadmap

1. The Risk Scorecard

2. Additional Language Capability

3. Upgrades to the User Interface

Product Roadmap – Highlights


We’re here to answer your

questions!

Learn More

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