Acceleration of merchant onboarding & KYC process and management of an upstream merger at a payment service provider
Challenge
A highly manual and time-consuming merchant onboarding process (including KYC checks and technical setup) led to a suboptimal merchant experience, high costs, and lost revenue due to delayed transaction capability
A tax-driven upstream merger between two legal entities had to be cross-departmentally planned and managed
Approach
Acceleration of the Merchant Onboarding & KYC Process
Identification and prioritization of actionable recommendations to accelerate the merchant onboarding & KYC process incl.
Built a deep understanding of the current process via work shadowings with onboarding agents
Created process transparency via visualizing it as a BPMN flowchart and revisiting SOPs
Collected pain points & solution ideas in 1-on-1 interviews and cross-functional workshops
Benchmarked competitors’ onboarding processes from the merchant perspective
Established and analyzed a reliable data foundation by clarifying definitions and segments, and providing relevant reports
Modeled time and cost savings potential resulting from various measures
Implementation of selected solutions, e.g.
Digitalized data collection and contract generation by Sales to eliminate manual entry of paper contracts, ensure data completeness, and reduce errors and follow-up questions
Prepared the introduction of automation solutions by assessing automatable process steps, defining requirements, and identifying/evaluating vendors
Brainstormed and implemented organizational, procedural and technical ideas to reduce handovers and thus passive waiting times
Conceptualized the parallelization of KYC checks and technical setups
Assessed legal requirements and critically challenged compliance guidelines to better balance legal conformity and process efficiency
Enhanced merchant communications with interim updates to reduce capacity-binding status inquiries from merchants
Derived further recommendations based on individual merchants’ negative experiences
Management of an Upstream Merger
Developed a project plan with required preparations (e.g. accounting adjustments, coordination with banks, regulatory approvals and notifications, communication with merchants and employees, legal clarifications, contract preparations, IT implications, updates to imprint and email signatures, etc.)
Supported task owners with coordination, sparring, and challenging
Result
Increased average onboarding completion speed by >60% while reducing overall costs
Upstream merger successfully completed on time