Who are the account holder, cardholder, and authorized users for Issuing?

Account holder and Legal Entity

An Account holder is an entity you can issue cards to. An Account holder can represent your customers as well as your company itself.

Linked to an Account holder is a Legal Entity. A Legal Entity contains all of the information required for Know Your Customer (KYC) verification. The Legal Entities can be of many different types, such as businesses, non-profits, public companies, partnerships, or individuals.

Depending on the type of business, the KYC information required may differ. You must link a Legal Entity to an Account holder to start the KYC verification process. Once KYC has been completed and approved, the Account holder becomes eligible for activities such as card issuing.

Cardholder

The cardholder is the entity you issue cards to. In general, the Legal Entity is linked to the Account holder to which a payment instrument (card) is issued.

Note: A cardholder shouldn’t be confused with an authorized Card User.

To distinguish a cardholder from an authorized card user, think of the example in which a card is issued to a company. The company in this example is the cardholder. An employee using the card can be considered the authorized card user.

Authorized card user

De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) requires Adyen to check that our card users aren’t sanctioned individuals and can therefore be authorized card users.

In most cases, Adyen has to collect the first name, last name, date of birth, and citizenship of the individuals who will find themselves with an Adyen card in hand.

This information will be treated as sensitive information. Adyen will run regular checks to verify none of our card users are on a publicly available sanctioned list, such as the OFAC list.

Note: Adyen’s Partners must update this information if card usage changes occur.