Softrip Payments - Underwriting Process and Onboarding Application Requirements

What is the Underwriting process?

This payment facilitation platform, the Softrip Payments partner, maintains and meets legal and regulatory requirements for all users and business types to ensure a safe and secure environment for Merchants to process transactions and fund their accounts.

Underwriting is the process of validating aspects of an applying business (Facilitator, Referrer, or Merchant), and their personal owners' information. This validation process focuses attention on the following key elements of the Merchant’s application and the data provided in their signup form:

• Validating the Merchant’s business - ensures the Merchant’s submitted business data (e.g. address, website URL, etc.) is accurate and the scope of their goods/services is compliant with legal and regulatory guidelines.

• Validating the owners -  verifies the personal information (e.g. SSN, DOB, etc.) submitted by the Merchant is accurate and that they aren’t flagged on any government sanctions or payment-industry watchlists.

• Preventing illegal & fraudulent activity - as the payment facilitator, the platform is responsible to prevent any Merchants from engaging in illegal or fraudulent activity while using our platform. Some common relevant scenarios include preventing money-laundering (AML), identity theft, fraudulent account takeover etc.  

• Validating the Merchant’s bank account - confirming that the submitted banking information is valid and that the account is associated with the Merchant’s business and/or owner. This validation process meets industry requirements and helps prevent fraudulent activity.

In payment processing, merchant underwriting is a risk assessment every merchant undergoes before they can accept electronic payments. Underwriters use documents to verify identity, and credit history, and assess an applicant’s financial status while ensuring the info provided is accurate.

When the Softrip Payments partner processes transactions on behalf of a merchant, they are taking on a certain amount of risk. Processing a payment is like providing a business with credit, like a line of credit. Our partner will do its due diligence and assess a business’ merchant risk level before going ahead and providing it with a merchant account. This process is called underwriting.

Our partner uses a combination of automated tools and manual reviews to assess these factors and determine the risk level associated with a merchant. Depending on the outcome of the underwriting process, a merchant might be approved, approved with conditions, or denied payment processing services.

Underwriting Process Flow

While boarding new Merchants, a two-step underwriting process is simultaneously triggered for each:

1. A new Merchant entity is created within the Softrip Payments Portal 

2. The Merchant’s application is submitted to the Underwriting team for review and approval.

Upon underwriting approval, a Merchant will be able to begin processing payments.

Application Requirements

To get started with merchant account onboarding, we will need the following:

• Completed Application - https://payments.softrip.com/signup/SoftripSignup

• A completed travel questionnaire (attached)

• 3 months of recent bank statements

• 3 months of recent processing statements

• P&L and Balance Sheet for the following years. Accrual-based financial statements are strongly preferred:

  • 2021

  • 2022

  • YTD 2023 interim results

The documentation may be uploaded either directly into the application or within the portal once sign-up has been completed.

Assuming all accurate information is submitted, the onboarding process should take 3 to 5 business days.