Business Verification Beyond Approval: KYB Requirements for Crypto Payments

• The review looks at your company and at the people who own and run it.
• At Mercuryo, it takes a short form, a few documents, and an online identity check for your directors, shareholders, and ultimate beneficial owners.
• Your team can start building and testing the integration before verification is complete, and you go live once onboarding is done.
• Your target markets are part of the review too, and availability follows where your users are.
• Businesses you work with can also be approved to offer the widget through you.
• As your business grows, our team helps you add new apps, partners, and features such as off-ramp.

Because a crypto payments provider processes payments for your users, regulators expect it to know which businesses it serves. Business verification is how it builds that picture.

At Mercuryo, we use this process to obtain comprehensive information about each business partner, following our internal policies and the legal requirements that apply to us.

Across the EU, those requirements are moving to a single rulebook. The EU's new anti-money-laundering regulation, which applies from 10 July 2027, replaces national rules with a single rulebook and treats crypto-asset service providers as financial institutions with the same obligations as banks and payment firms.

The regulation also sets more detailed and harmonized rules on beneficial ownership, the part of the review covered next.

The review starts with who owns and runs your company. For us, that covers:

directors, the people who run the company

shareholders, the people and companies that hold shares in your business

ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs), the individuals who ultimately own or control the company, including through another company

If a founder holds their stake through a holding company, the review looks through the holding to the founder. EU law follows the same logic, since the new anti-money-laundering regulation counts ownership held directly or indirectly through a chain of companies.

Take a fictional wallet with three key people:

All three will receive the identity check link, and a heads-up from you helps them prepare.

Our verification procedure asks for:

• a brief form with key information about your business

• an official document listing your current directors, shareholders and UBOs

• proof of who owns your website's domain

• an online identity check for each director, shareholder and UBO, with basic personal details, a valid government-issued ID and a recent proof of address

Since Mercuryo asks for documents issued within the last three months, gather them once you are ready to move forward. Depending on the business, the review may also cover details such as average monthly and yearly turnover or the source of funds.

While the documents are being reviewed, your product team can start building and testing the integration, then switch to live payments when onboarding wraps up.

Alongside your company and the people behind it, the review looks at where you plan to operate. Each market has its own legal and regulatory requirements, so a regulated provider needs to know where your users will come from.

If your business and your target markets are within our coverage, you can onboard as a partner. When you plan those markets, keep the following in mind:

• The on-ramp, which lets users buy crypto, works with 62 currencies.
• The off-ramp, which lets users sell crypto, settles in euros and US dollars, depending on the country.
• Availability follows the user's location at the moment of the transaction, wherever your company is registered.

A wallet based in one country can therefore serve users in many others, and the same goes for the businesses you work with when they bring the service to new markets.

That is why sharing your full list of target markets during onboarding, along with your partners' markets, helps us confirm coverage for each one.

Our checks also cover where the payment flow appears. You agree with us on the sites and apps where the widget will run, which make up your approved list, and new ones are added as your product grows.

You can also offer the solution to other businesses, once Mercuryo has approved each of them through the standard checks. A wallet could, for example, bring in a dApp that wants to embed the wallet's buy button.

What a partner provides depends on how it connects. A partner that places the payment flow inside its own site or app completes its own KYB.

If a partner only sends its users to your site, where the flow already runs, it is reviewed based on its website address instead. Deciding between the two early makes partner launch dates easier to plan.

Your business profile with us is updated as the business grows. A funding round, a new app, or a new market each brings an update to the verification you completed at the start.

A second fictional wallet might go through a year like this:

Share changes like these with your contacts at Mercuryo as they happen, and they will guide you through what each change needs.

Our partner onboarding covers KYB, building and testing the integration with our team, finalizing the contracts, and planning the go-live.

During onboarding, a sales manager and technical team guide you via live chat, email, or video call. Once you are live, you get a dedicated success manager and a marketing lead, and a Merchant Support team handles day-to-day questions.

On the user side, we handle KYC ourselves, and you choose how deeply to integrate it. Returning users who have already verified with us don't need to verify again.

We also handle user chargebacks and disputes as the party that processes the payments, and users can reach our support team by chat 24/7.

To see what onboarding would look like for your company and your partners, and how to offer crypto buying and selling to users in 150+ countries, reach out to Mercuryo.

Do I need a crypto payment processor license if the provider is regulated? It depends on what your product does and where your users are, so confirm it with your legal counsel.

On our side, the entities behind our services and the registrations and authorizations that apply in each region are listed on our licenses page, and we can walk you through how the services are structured.

KYB vs KYC: what is the difference? KYC verifies an individual, such as a user buying crypto. KYB verifies a company along with its owners and directors. Your company completes this check when it joins Mercuryo and keeps its details current afterward. KYC for your users is handled on our side.

Which payment processors will onboard crypto-related businesses? Look for providers licensed for crypto activity that serve your markets and business model. Our on- and off-ramp is designed for web3 apps, wallets, exchanges, and fintech platforms, and our onboarding steps are published openly.

What are the AML/KYC challenges in B2B crypto payments? For a business working with a crypto payments provider, anti-money-laundering (AML) work centers on showing who owns the business, how it operates, and where the payment flow is offered.