Merchant onboarding, risk assessment and identity verification – efficient and GwG-compliant

Regardless of whether the issuing institution is itself an obliged entity under the GwG due to its registered office, payment institutions and e-money institutions, agents and e-money agents, as well as e-money traders are always subject to anti-money laundering law.

Implementing KYC standards can be a major challenge for obliged entities under the GwG, as they have to deal with a wide range of regulatory requirements. These requirements can vary from country to country, which can make compliance with KYC standards more difficult. In addition, obliged entities under the GwG must comply with their country's data protection regulations, which can complicate the collection, storage and processing of customer data.

Legal basis

Section 2 (3), (4), (5) GwG

Supervisory authority

BaFin (agents pursuant to Section 1 (9) of the Payment Services Supervision Act

E-money agents pursuant to Section 1 (10) of the Payment Services Supervision Act

You are an obliged entity if you…

Payment institutions and e-money institutions:

Payment institutions, e-money institutions and domestic branches and branch offices of comparable (payment or e-money) institutions headquartered abroad

Agents and e-money agents

Agents and e-money agents, as well as payment institutions and e-money institutions headquartered in another state party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area that are established in Germany via agents or e-money agents

E-money traders

Self-employed traders who distribute or redeem e-money of a credit institution pursuant to Section 1 (2) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Payment Services Supervision Act

BetterCo supports GwG-compliant onboarding and monitoring of your merchants, investors, buyers, clients, holdings, customers and more. The KYC onboarding covers the identification (= data collection) of your customers – whether natural persons or legal entities (B2C/B2B KYC) – and, where applicable, the identification of beneficial owners and authorized representatives. To do this, we access public data sources to pre-fill as much data as possible. Based on the data collected, you can prepare the risk assessment and derive due diligence obligations. To also verify the identity of customers, beneficial owners and authorized representatives after identification, we offer suitable methods – from face-to-face verification to a qualified electronic signature with VideoIdent. Of course, you can also bring your own DocuSign account.

BetterCo integrates seamlessly into your website. The data is stored directly in your BetterCo workspace and can be further qualified through KYC-compliant onboarding, risk assessment and identity verification. If needed, the customer can be invited to collaborate in BetterCo at any time to add or confirm information.

Thanks to our approach of generating no-code workflows and dynamically storing extended master or process data, all processes can be adapted to your needs. By default, every workflow produces a PDF report at the end. This can serve as a "bridge" to email- and paper-based processes. Alternatively, you can easily create workflows in which you store your PDF reports. This way, you can digitize your existing customer journey step by step.

BetterCo is an end-to-end system that supports all onboarding processes, from integration into your website to contract signing. At the same time, BetterCo's architecture is designed to integrate into existing system landscapes. Together with our partners, we are constantly expanding our "out-of-the-box" integrations, e.g., with law firm systems such as LegalSense or CRMs such as HubSpot. Get in touch with us.

BetterCo lets you regularly match all of your customers' company and contact data against public data sources such as the commercial register or PEP, sanctions or adverse media data. You can set up dedicated notifications that inform you, for example, about the appointment of new managing directors, changes in the shareholder structure or a PEP entry.