When are verification details collected?

Know Your Customer (KYC) through verification

Before you can process payments, pay out their funds, and offer financial products to your users, Adyen is required to verify the users on your platform.

These verification checks are also called Know Your Customer (KYC) verification which are required as per payment industry regulations.

Upfront vs staggered verification

The verification process depends on which verification profile the user is on. Users can be verified upfront or staggered.
If you have a platform set-up, users are verified automatically (upfront) by default.

Upfront verification

In an upfront verification process, all the information required to process the KYC checks are collected and verified at the creation of an account. Once all the required information has been verified undergoing all required KYC checks, you won’t need to ask users for additional information.
With upfront verification, payouts continue even if the processed volume reaches a higher tier.

Staggered verification

Staggered verification allows for a faster initial sign-up since not all account holders have to go through the full verification process.

In a staggered verification process, all the information required to process the KYC checks are collected and verified when needed. The verification tiers will determine what additional information needs to be collected to continue using capabilities or payouts.

When an account holder is moved to a higher verification tier, payouts are temporarily disallowed until the additional KYC verification checks. 

This article linked provides additional information regarding staggered verification.

Verification tiers

There are four verification tiers. These tiers are determined by the account holder’s country/region, legal entity type, and processing volume.

An account holder can be moved into a higher verification tier due to processing volume, requesting high-risk capabilities or triggered verification checks.

If your users change or update their data after they’re onboarded, KYC verification checks will be re-triggered to verify the new data. If the verification fails, we may set a deadline for updating the data.

For more details, check out our collect verification details and verification process article.