Milestone 1: TabaPay Review
Call to adventure....
Your TabaPay sales representative will send a kick off email inviting you to submit a merchant application, agreement, and supplementary material. The application will collect information about your business, any UBOs, and its authorized signers. The supplementary material will consist of business documentation, policies, financial history, and other items TabaPay may choose to request based on use case and merchant type, as described below.
Minimum requirements for acquiring Sponsorship
To qualify, your company at a minimum:
- Provides complete and proper corporate and financial documentation
- Has a functioning website that displays Terms and Conditions to the cardholder
- Is not subject to any administrative or regulatory enforcement action, pending or threatened class action lawsuits
- Does not have any ultimate beneficial owner ("UBO") on any sanctions, watch, or Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) lists
- Has never before been kicked of a payment network for violated network standards or rules
- Is able to meet financial obligations related to settlement exposure and potential liabilities resulting from adverse events such as chargebacks, fines, or reversals
- Is properly licensed for all applicable activity and in all applicable jurisdictions for business that it conducts (e.g. money transmission, lending, brokerage)
Please reach out to your sales representative or [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns regarding your use case, merchant category, and related requirements.
Common Use Cases and Requirements
Use Case | Description | Minimum Items for Review |
---|---|---|
Consumer Cash Advances | Disbursement or collection of micro-credit product that does not apply a financing charge | KYC and OFAC policy or process description |
Early Wage Advances | Disbursement or collection of micro-credit product that does not apply a financing charge | KYC and OFAC policy or process description Prohibited Business List |
Lending | Disbursement or collection of regulated credit product by Licensed Lender or Financial Institution | Lender Attestation disbursements only: demonstration of Visa & MC's fair lending guidelines KYC and OFAC policy or process description UDAAP and Collections Policy Evidence of Licenses |
Person-to-person Pulling funds from or disbursing funds to cardholders/account holders for domestic or cross border person-to-person money remittance conducted by a licensed entity |
Merchants that facilitate person-to-person transactions are either licensed (MCC 4829) or rely on license of an FDIC or NCUA member financial institution in good standing (MCC 6012) | BSA/AML/OFAC and Transaction Monitoring Policies AML Audit & Management Response Evidence of Licenses |
Account-to-Account (i.e. account funding or offloading) | Limited Agent, Program Manager, or Banking-as-a-Service Provider enabling Bank-sponsored financial
services that wants to enable loading or offloading funds from or to an external account Merchants that facilitate banking-services are either licensed (MCC 4829) or rely on license of an FDIC or NCUA member financial institution in good standing (MCC 6012) |
BSA/AML/OFAC and Transaction Monitoring Policies AML Audit & Management Response Evidence of Licenses |
Business-to-Business payments Accepting payments from businesses or sending payments to vendor |
Business-to-Business Payment Provider that wants to enable invoice payments | BSA/AML/OFAC and Transaction Monitoring Policies AML Audit & Management Response Legal Opinion or Evidence of Licenses |
Aggregators Merchant that enable a single use case as described throughout this exhibit on behalf of sub-merchants |
Software-as-a-Service platforms specialized within a single business vertical and with a use case that falls within two categories: 1. disbursements funded by corporate entities or 2. money transmission or banking related services | Know-Your-Business Policy requirements by use cases |
Accepting or making payments for high-risk use cases, such as crypto or high-risk security brokerages | High Risk Merchants (HRM) must undergo Visa and Mastercard enhanced reviews and be registered with each network | BSA/AML/OFAC and Transaction Monitoring Policies AML Audit & Management Response Legal Opinions per State Evidence of Licenses |
Sub-merchant Settlement or Gig Worker Payouts | Marketplaces or eCommerce platforms that enable micro-merchants or gig workers to market their services and accept payment through their platform | BSA/AML/OFAC and Transaction Monitoring Policies AML Audit & Management Response Legal Opinion or Evidence of Licenses |
(1) Evidence of Licensing
Some platforms enabling regulated banking or financial activities, like neobanks (i.e. challenger banks, limited agents or program managers to banks) partner with an FDIC or NCUA member Financial Institution ("FI") rather than become licensed themselves. If this describes your business model, there are two considerations:
- In lieu of money transmission licenses, we collect a letter affirming the relationship between you and your bank. TabaPay calls it an Agency Letter as limited agency is the most common type of engagement to an FI.
We will provide a template of that letter to give to your FI which can be amended as needed so long as it establishes:
- The financial services you offer are sanctioned and overseen by your partnering FI
- Your company is not receiving funds resulting from the activity TabaPay is facilitating; the funds remain under the control of the FI and the individual users of your program.
- Your FI is aware of TabaPay's involvement in the transaction flow
- TabaPay will be notified should the relationship between you and your FI end.
The letter should be signed by an authorized representative of the FI's legal or compliance department.
- Your partnering FI should be clearly disclosed to your users as the purveyor of banking and financial services on your marketing material and in the terms and conditions with your users.
(2) Know Your Business ("KYB") process
A Trevi Pay Survey of 150 businesses in 2021 found the 98% of businesses "experienced financial losses (averaging 3.5% of a B2B business’s annual revenue) due to successful fraud attacks last year."
Any one of our customers that boards a company as a client on our system is required to have validated the company's existence and good standing and the individuals representing the business as signers to any application or agreement. Please see here for more detail
Updated 5 months ago