---
title: "Hold a Merchant Boarding to Perform a Review"
slug: "hold-a-merchant-boarding-to-perform-a-review"
updated: 2026-03-07T00:19:59Z
published: 2026-03-07T00:30:27Z
stale: true
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://resource.payrix.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Hold a Merchant Boarding to Perform a Review

You can place a merchant’s boarding status into Manual Review when their Portal account is created but has not yet been fully boarded. This can be helpful for highly sensitive merchant locations and industries to verify low-risk and full compliance. This article shows you how to update a merchant’s boarding status and perform a risk review.

## Hold and Review a New Merchant

Complete all steps in the following sections to set a newly created merchant to Manual Review, review the associated risks, and update the status.

### Change the Merchant’s Boarding Status

1. Select **Merchants**in the left navigation panel.
2. Select the new merchant’s listing to open the merchant’s profile page.
3. Select the **Account** tab under the Business menu and click the **Edit** icon.
4. Click the **Boarding Status** dropdown menu and select **Manual Review**.
5. Click the **Confirm** icon next to the Account tab.

Changing the merchant’s boarding status to manual review creates a new listing on the Risk Management page.

> [!NOTE]
> **Note**
> 
> If auto-boarding is not configured, the risk parameters automatically flag merchants for manual review.

### Review the Merchant’s Risk

1. Select **Risk** under Admin in the left navigation panel.
2. Select the **Merchants** tab, then locate the merchant you want to review.
3. Select the merchant’s listing to open the Underwriting page.
4. Review the various risk card data provided for points of possible fraud or irregularity.
5. If any irregularities or high-risk information need to be noted for other risk analysts, click **Add Note**in the Notes and Documents panel.

### Update the Merchant’s Boarding Status

1. Return to the top of the merchant’s Underwriting page to update their boarding status.
2. Based on your decision, change the merchant’s status:

  - **Approve for Boarding:**If your review is positive and you’re ready to release the hold and board the merchant, click **Board**at the top of the page.
  - **Decline:** If your review is negative and you find high-risk factors that you want to avoid with this merchant, click **Status**and select **Denied**. Select one of the following reasons for choosing Denied:
    - **Rejected:** Declined after manual review for any reason
    - **Fraud:** Declined after fraud was detected during manual review
    - **No Response:** Declined after missing information was discovered and the merchant was contacted to address the issue, but did not respond
    - **Withdrawn:** Declined after the merchant decided to withdraw their submission and no longer wants to use your platform

> [!TIP]
> **Tip**
> 
> When updating your merchant’s boarding status on the Underwriting page, you can optionally place a one-time reserve on the merchant to reserve funds in cases where you’re uncertain about risk factors that could result in negative charges. This reserve can help offset the costs your business might incur as a result.

**Result:** Your merchant’s boarding status is released based on your review choice. After the merchant’s status changes to *Board*, they can use the platform immediately.

## Next Steps

After manually reviewing the merchant, review the following related articles:

- [Hold a Transaction to Respond to Suspicious Activity](/v1/docs/hold-a-transaction-to-respond-to-suspicious-activity):****Manually create holds on transactions that are suspicious or otherwise high-risk.
- [Automate Risk Review with Policies](/v1/docs/automate-risk-review-with-policies): Automate future transaction holds or merchant boarding reviews with different risk criteria.

Additionally, view the following content in the Risk and Compliance Guide:

- Read [Merchant Onboarding Risk Best Practices](/v1/docs/merchant-onboarding-risk-best-practices) for guidance on identifying merchant boarding risks.
- Read the [Merchant Monitoring Risk Guide](/v1/docs/merchant-monitoring-risk-guide) for steps to mitigate risks associated with boarding merchants.

An entity that can process transactions and has been onboarded through a Payrix Pro partner.

The process of adding clients (merchants) to the Payrix Pro platform to use the Payrix Pro payment solutions. Also known as *onboarding*.

The web portal offered by the Payrix Pro platform to accomplish tasks for their business through a web-based user interface rather than the API. The Payrix Pro portal contains general settings, payment processing options, reporting, fee settings, group assignments, user management, and much more.