Who this section is for

Businesses building their own platform on top of PayMongo — for example, a marketplace, a delivery app, a SaaS product with embedded payments, or any product that needs to create and operate PayMongo accounts for its own users (merchants, riders, sellers, freelancers, consumers). Onboarding-as-a-Service is how you create those accounts, run them through identity verification, and activate them so they can use PayMongo's product suite — wallets, payment disbursements, payment acceptance, and more.

What you will find in this section

Onboarding-as-a-Service handles the lifecycle of a child account — creating it, verifying the authorized representative, and activating it. Once a child account is activated, you can extend it with other PayMongo products such as Wallets-aaS, QR Ph-aaS, and Payment Acceptance without a second onboarding pass.

Not every PayMongo product depends on Onboarding-as-a-Service. Some products work directly on your own account or as standalone services — for example, Verifications-aaS supports ad-hoc identity verification without creating an account, and Ledgers-aaS lets you create ledgers under your own parent account without a child involved. Use Onboarding-as-a-Service when the work you are doing belongs on someone else's account in your ecosystem.

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Scope of this section
Onboarding-as-a-Service is the developer guide for the Create an account path — the API integration story for creating, verifying, and activating child accounts on your platform.
The Invite path (sending a linking invitation to a new email or to an existing PayMongo account) is documented under Account & Settings → Linked accounts, which is the canonical home for the parent / child relationship model and the invitation flow.
Both paths are introduced in Onboarding paths so you can decide which fits your product before diving in.

Page	What it covers
Use cases	Recognize the platform shapes this product is built for.
Key concepts	Terminology, the parent / child model, the account lifecycle.
Onboarding paths	Choosing between Invite and Create an account.
Quick start	The end-to-end happy path: create → verify → update → activate.
Opt-in features	Capabilities you request from PayMongo: auto-configuration, partner KYC reliance, account capabilities.
Best practices	FAQs and tips per stage of the flow.
Testing	Test keys, sandbox behavior, mock data.
Troubleshooting	Common errors and how to recover.
Appendix	Enum values: industries, states, source of funds, document types, and more.

Webhook payloads for onboarding events — identity verification and activation — live in Onboarding webhooks under Developer Tools.

Before you begin

Onboarding-as-a-Service is available to every PayMongo account by default — no separate enablement step. Your acceptance of PayMongo's Terms of Use covers account linking and child-account onboarding for your platform; see Part IV — Platform Capability / Account Linking Feature for the specific provisions that apply.

All Onboarding-aaS endpoints accept test secret keys (sk_test_…). Test calls return mock data so you can validate the request and response shape end-to-end before switching to live. See Authentication for details.

Opt-in features such as Auto-configuration and Partner Verification still require a request to PayMongo. Standard onboarding does not.

Dashboard access is on by default: once a child account is activated, its authorized representative can login to PayMongo Dashboard. If you are building a white-labeled experience, see Dashboard access for what that means and Disable dashboard access to disable it.

Where to start

If you are evaluating the product, start with Use cases to recognize whether your platform fits, then read Key concepts for the terminology and lifecycle.

If you are ready to build, jump to Onboarding paths to choose your approach, then follow Quick start.