What events trigger KYC verification of a user?

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.

How KYC works

Adyen verifies users as soon as a new account holder is created and capabilities are requested. When the verification checks are being done, the KYC verification status will be set to pending.
Adyen will run the specific KYC checks required to enable a new capability. If all the KYC checks have been verified, the verificationStatus will be set to valid and the user will be able to use this capability.
If the verification fails, the verificationStatus will be set to invalid. The user can use the capabilities after remedying the error codes. 

To get updates about the verification status and results, you can listen to balancePlatform.accountHolder.updated webhooks. They  provide verification status and results of your users as detailed here. 

Find more info in the Adyen docs on general error and sub-error codes. 

The visualization below illustrates the process of requesting capabilities for your users:

The verification process when a user updates or amends data

When a user amends or updates their data after they are already using capabilities, Adyen verifies them again.

We send verification-related updates through webhook notifications that detail the remediating action for the user. If the verification is successful after new or updated information is provided, the user can continue to use the capability and the deadline is cleared.

If the verification fails, Adyen might set a deadline to resolve the KYC issues. They are allowed to continue using the capabilities while the deadline is active.

The verification process when a user moves to a higher tier

If your users are on staggered verification, we will send a webhook notification to you when a user has moved to a higher tier. The capability in question will be set to false until the verification of the required information is completed.

Once the user has provided the additional required data and the KYC checks are successfully passed, the account holder is allowed to continue using the capabilities and the deadline is cleared.

For staggered verification, users will be prompted to provide additional information when they move to a higher tier.

Please note verification deadlines are a new feature only available in v3 of the Legal Entity Management API.

For more information regarding KYC verification check out the Adyen Docs pages on the verification process and user capabilities.