Overview

Before merchants can process payments, BlueSnap must collect and verify required merchant information as part of Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements. These requirements help prevent fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes.

To meet these requirements, BlueSnap collects:

Business information — legal name, location, and product or service details
Banking information — bank account and payout details
Ownership information — details about the business owner
Authorized representative — information about an authorized individual (e.g., CEO or director)

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If you are migrating existing merchants, BlueSnap may provide migration-specific account access or tools. Your implementation team will confirm whether this applies to your setup.

Choose Your Onboarding Approach

You must also decide which of the three merchant application approaches (Hosted, White-labeled Hosted, or API-based) best fits your needs. This determines how your platform collects merchant information and submits it to BlueSnap for verification.

Each option offers a different balance of launch speed, branding control, and development effort.

Hosted Application

The Hosted Application is a code-free, localized application that you can share with your merchants. BlueSnap securely collects merchant information so you can onboard merchants quickly without building or maintaining the application flow. Merchants create an account with BlueSnap and BlueSnap branding is visible.

This option is best if you want the fastest launch path and are comfortable with merchants completing a BlueSnap-branded application.

White-labeled Hosted Application (Recommended)

The White-labeled Hosted Application is branded with your logo and brand colors. This option provides a custom merchant application experience with minimal development effort. BlueSnap is not visible in the application experience, though the BlueSnap domain may appear in the application URL.

This option requires slightly more setup than a standard Hosted Application, but significantly less development effort than building with the APIs. This is recommended for most platforms because it provides a branded merchant experience while BlueSnap continues to host and maintain the application flow.

API Application

This is a fully custom application built with BlueSnap APIs. This option gives you complete control over the merchant experience and keeps BlueSnap hidden from merchants, but requires more development and ongoing maintenance.

This option is best if you need full control over the merchant onboarding experience and your team can build, secure, and maintain the application flow.

Next Steps

Refer to the Hosted Application, White-labeled Hosted Application, and API Application implementation guides for more information about your chosen approach.

Then, learn how to: