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 tutorial shows you how to update a merchant’s boarding status and perform a risk review.
Audience: Partner
Hold and Review a new Merchant
Complete all steps in the following sections to set a newly created merchant to Manual Review, review the risks associated, and update the status.
Prerequisites
Before attempting this tutorial, you must:
Meet the general prerequisites described in Get Started with Use Case Tutorials.
Have a new Merchant complete and submit a signup form.
Access the Merchant Profile
Click Merchants in the left navigation panel to open the Merchants page.
Click the new Merchant’s listing to open the Merchant Profile page.
Change the Merchant’s Boarding Status
Click the Account tab under the Business menu and click the Edit icon.
Click the Boarding Status dropdown menu and select Manual Review.
Click the Confirm icon next to the Account tab.
The Merchant’s boarding status has been changed to manual review and a new listing has been automatically created on the Risk Management page.
Note
If auto-boarding is not configured, the risk parameters will automatically flag merchants for manual review.
Access the Merchant’s Underwriting page
Click Risk under the Admin category in the left navigation panel to open the Risk Management page.
Click the Merchants tab, then locate the Merchant you’d like to review.
Click the Merchant’s listing to open the Underwriting page.
Review the Merchant
On the Merchant Underwriting page, review the various Risk Card data provided for points of possible fraud or irregularity.
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
Return to the top of the Merchant Underwriting page to update the Merchant’s boarding status.
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
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 are 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 has been released based on your review and release choice to either return the funds to the merchant’s customer or process the transaction as normal, possibly reserving the funds for later resolution of customer issues. After the merchant’s status changes to Board, they are ready to use the platform immediately.
Next Steps
After manually reviewing the Merchant, review the following guides for related topics:
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: 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 for guidance on identifying merchant boarding risks.
Read the Merchant Monitoring Risk Guide for steps to mitigate risks associated with boarding Merchants.