KYC

Who is being verified?

This is the question that gets skipped, and it changes the commercial answer completely.

Merchant-side KYC verifies you and your directors during onboarding. It costs you time before launch and nothing afterwards. Nearly every gateway that settles to a bank account performs it, because its own banking partners require it.

Payer-side KYC verifies your customers before they can pay. It costs you conversion on every single transaction, and it is the reason some merchants find that crypto acceptance does not work for them at all.

A provider advertising no-KYC almost always means the second, which the verification guide covers at length. It rarely means the first.

What does the process involve?

Identity documents, proof of address, and sometimes a liveness check for directors and beneficial owners above an ownership threshold. Alongside it, KYB covers the business itself, and merchant services covers the contract around it: incorporation documents, ownership structure and the nature of the trade.

Why do so few providers publish the details?

Because requirements vary by jurisdiction and by vertical, so a single published statement would be wrong somewhere. The effect is that merchant verification is the least documented field in this index, and launch dates get planned around a process nobody will describe in advance. Each card in the catalogue records what its provider publishes.

What to ask before you apply

Which documents, from whom, and how long the median approval takes. Whether your vertical is accepted at all, in writing, before any integration work begins.

And the question nobody volunteers: what triggers a review of an account already live, and what happens to your balance during one. A provider that reviews by freezing settlement is a materially different proposition from one that reviews while continuing to pay out, and both describe it as a review.