Onboarding new merchants can be a real pain. You need a lot of information and documents before taking them on. The merchant onboarding process just isn’t easy and is always prone to hurdles along the way.
Whether you’re a credit card facility or you own a product or SaaS, the onboarding process results in a mountain of emails, attachments and endless follow-ups that ends in total chaos.
This headache can be avoided by streamlining your process and making things just that bit easier on yourself. Send your new merchants a merchant onboarding form with everything you need them to submit, and you can say goodbye to a lot of unnecessary stress and frustration.
Get our merchant onboarding form template
Content Snare is here to help you streamline your merchant onboarding process. Sign up to access our built-in merchant onboarding form template. It’s ready when you are.
What information do I need to gather within my merchant onboarding form?
Great question! Here’s a general outline of what your merchant onboarding form should look like, along with all the details you’ll need from the merchant to kickstart your partnership as quickly as possible.
Company Information
This set of questions will help you establish the basics surrounding the company and their information.
- What is your company’s name?
- When was the company registered?
- What type of ownership is your company under?
- What is the Registration Certificate (RC) number?
- What is the company phone number?
- Can you provide the full address of the company’s headquarters?
Contact Information
These questions will allow you to gather the contact details of the individuals that will become your points of contact at the company.
- What is the name of your primary company contact?
- What is your primary company contact’s email address?
- What is your primary company contact’s phone number?
- What is their role within the company?
- What is the name of your secondary company contact?
- What is your secondary company contact’s email address?
- What is your secondary company contact’s phone number?
- What is their role within the company?
Website Details
These questions are useful as they’ll supply you with the necessary information about the website the merchant intends to connect your product or payment service to.
- What is the name of your website?
- Can you provide your website’s URL?
- Can you specify the Website Development Platform?
- What e-commerce platform do you use?
- What products/services do you sell on the website?
- Do customers need to register for an account on your website before purchasing?
- Roughly how long does it take for the products/services to be delivered to the customer?
- How are these products/services delivered to the customer?
- Do you offer refunds?
Financial Details
This set of questions will allow the merchant to fill in the required financial details and will save you from having to collect them later.
- Can you provide your account name?
- Can you provide your account number?
- Is this a current account or savings account?
- Can you provide your BVN (Bank Verification Number).
Pre-check Information
These questions are vital in determining whether or not you can help the merchant obtain a credit card merchant account.
- Can you provide the legal name of the company?
- If applicable, can you provide the registered DBA/trade name?
- Can you indicate the country of incorporation?
- If applicable, can you indicate the country of incorporation of your parent company?
- What is the name of the Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO)? If more than one, please provide the additional names.
- What is the nationality of the UBO? If more than one, please provide the additional nationalities.
- Can you provide any additional details regarding the products/services you offer?
Initial Documentation
Last but not least, the below list will give the merchant an indication of the documentation they’ll need to provide to verify their company and details.
- Merchant Logo
- Copy of Certificate of Incorporation
- Corporate Bank Account Details
- Evidence of Service Delivery
- Developer's Details
- CAC Registration
- Memorandum & Articles of Association
- Valid ID of major shareholders
- Copy of Operational Licence
- Details of Transactional History over the last 6 months
What’s the best way to create a merchant onboarding form?
Now that you’re familiar with what goes into creating a successful merchant onboarding form, it’s time to choose a tool to help you bring it to life. More importantly though, a tool that doesn’t suck.
There are many ways in which you could approach this part and, with a bunch of different solutions on the market, most people find their match after a process of trial and error.
However, with all of those merchants to cater for already, we know you don’t have time to faff about, which is why we’ve done the hard work for you and come up with some options (you’re welcome).
Use an online forms tool
The world isn’t short of online forms tools that allow you to create basic forms and collect the information you need. An example of one of these would be Google Forms which, as you’d expect, does what it says on the tin.
However, unfortunately, a majority of these online forms tools have restrictions that mean that, despite using them, your productivity can still end up being hindered.
For instance, with Google Forms and many others, the receiver of the form is forced to answer the entirety of the form at once, as their progress cannot be saved part-way through. This can be a real problem, especially if the form is quite lengthy or requires the person to search for particular documents or pieces of information.
As a result of the above, your client is likely to skip multiple questions they’re unable to answer at the time or provide incorrect content instead. Nightmare! This is made worse by the fact that Google Forms does not have the ability to send your clients emails automatically, leaving you left to do the dirty work and chase after the information you need.
Use an all-in-one tool like Content Snare
The restrictions that exist within a majority of forms tools disappear when you begin using Content Snare.
Content Snare was specially designed to make it easy to collect onboarding information from your clients. Once you’re set up, within a matter of minutes, you can have your first request already on its way to your client. From there, all that’s left to do is sit back and relax!
All responses are saved automatically, allowing your client to fill out their request in increments that they feel comfortable with. Having the ability to return later almost guarantees a more positive experience for your clients and a more accurate and complete set of information for you.
Content Snare sends reminder emails to your clients at a frequency of your choice, which are entirely customizable. This saves you from having to engage in a constant back and forth by email, which can take up a lot of your time, and ensures that deadlines are met. As you know, when an important project is delayed, it can really be a pain in the a**!
We really hope this post has given you some much-needed information and ideas for your next merchant onboarding form.
Any important questions we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
