Who this section is for

Business owners, C-level leaders, product, engineering, and compliance teams. Read this page first to understand how Onboarding-as-a-Service works as a building block — how it lets your platform extend PayMongo to your own users so you can grow your ecosystem without rebuilding KYC, KYB, or payments yourself.

Overview

Onboarding-as-a-Service is the foundation building block for building your platforms on PayMongo. Use it to create accounts for the users in your ecosystem — merchants, sellers, riders, freelancers, consumers — and link them to your platform as child accounts. Once activated, each child can use the full PayMongo product suite the same way a stand-alone account would.

How the model fits together

Creating a child account automatically links it to your platform as a child account. It goes through the same compliance work any other PayMongo account does — KYC for the authorized representative, KYB for the business when the child is a merchant. The flow is flexible: most platforms use PayMongo's standard identity verification, while approved partners with their own KYC capability can use Partner Verification to submit their own results.

Onboarding-as-a-Service covers the lifecycle from account creation to activation. Once activated, the child operates as a regular PayMongo account, and your platform can transact on its behalf through Linked transactions.

Glossary

Account lifecycle

flowchart LR
  A[Create account] --> B[Identity verification]
  B -->|passed| C[Activate account]
  B -->|failed| B
  C --> D[Activated]
  D -.->|may later be declined<br/>by post-activation review| E[Declined]

Activation is automatic once all requirements are in place. After activation, the child is also subject to a post-activation risk review by PayMongo. It is possible — though uncommon — for an account to be declined after activation as part of this review. If your account is declined post-activation, contact [email protected] to raise a dispute.

There are two retry points to design for during onboarding:

1. Identity verification fails. Restart identity verification and submit another attempt. Repeat until the result is passed before activating.
2. Activation reports missing fields. Update the missing fields, then call Activate again.

Activation statuses

The Accounts API uses these statuses:

For the general account-setup state machine across PayMongo (live Dashboard view), see Account setup.

What activation provisions

Activation follows the same default pattern as a normal PayMongo account.

Additional payment methods and other products are not granted by default.

See Account capabilities for what is supported today and the full roadmap.

Opt-in features

Some Onboarding-as-a-Service features are off by default. Each carries its own eligibility requirements and regulatory considerations and must be reviewed before PayMongo enables it for your platform. Each has its own dedicated page with the full criteria.

Related pages

• Onboarding paths — choose the right approach for your platform.
• Quick start — implement the end-to-end happy path.
• Onboarding webhooks — listen for identity verification and activation events.
• Linked accounts — the parent reference for parent / child relationships.
• Linked transactions — operate on a child after activation.