Ian Hillis
Hi everyone, and welcome to PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix and Worldpay. I’m your host, Ian Hillis, and today I’m talking with David Blair, Senior Director of Product Management at Worldpay for Platforms, about merchant underwriting and onboarding.
Welcome to the show, David.
David Blair
Thank you, Ian. Glad to be here.
Ian Hillis
Audience, we’re in for a real treat today. I try my best to connect to David as often as possible and as much time he can make for me on the calendar, given he’s one of our leading product thinkers on risk and underwriting in our world of software-led payments. Let me give you a quick overview of David’s background before we jump in here.
David is a data-driven, agile product leader with 10 plus years of experience creating business strategies, scaling business revenue, and developing products for financial, governmental, and educational institutions. He has spent the past two years in the payments industry supporting Payrix from Worldpay as our Senior Director of Product Management. David is passionate about driving product innovation and delivering value to customers.
He holds three master’s degrees from BU in computer science, project management, and advertising and a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, double majoring in political science and history. You’ve spanned the continent, David, East Coast to West Coast, across all of that. Welcome to the show. I’m excited to dive in. Let’s get everyone on the same page with some terminology here, David. Let’s start off with a softball.
What is merchant underwriting and onboarding?
David Blair
Ian, thank you for that warm welcome. I like to think of merchant underwriting and onboarding as the platform’s opening handshake with the new business. So underwriting is where I decide if the merchant should even be welcome into the ecosystem.
It’s a bit like a background check. Are they who they claim to be? Do they run a legitimate business operation? Are there any hidden red flags that could cause trouble down the line? By doing all this upfront, I’m protecting not just the platform, but other merchants and customers who rely on a safe and trustworthy environment.
Onboarding, on the other hand, is the part where I help that newly vetted merchant get settled quickly and comfortably. Think of it as rolling out the welcome mat and handing them the keys. This means they’re integrated into the payment tools; they’re getting their account set up, and they’re making sure the whole process feels more like a guided tour than some bureaucratic slog. When everything goes smoothly, merchants can focus on what they do best, serving their customers.
Instead of wrestling with complicated forms or confusing instructions. Together, both underwriting and onboarding is kind of like a trust pipeline. If I do the groundwork correctly with underwriting, I reduce the risks and hassles for later.
And if I streamline onboarding, I keep merchants happy, engaged right from day one. Ultimately, it’s an investment in a long-term relationship. And when you have these steps clear, consistent, and transparent, everyone wins with this. The platform, the merchants gain momentum, and customers gain confidence that they’re dealing with someone legitimate.
Ian Hillis
You’ve painted a pretty compelling picture as to why this is important. Tell me a little bit about why it’s complicated and maybe not so straightforward as one might think.
David Blair
Merchant underwriting matters because it sets the tone for everything that follows from there on. If we let risky merchants slip through early on, it can lead to fraud, regulatory scrutiny, or just dissatisfaction down the road when you find out they’re not the right match for your platform. At the same time, you can’t be overly restrictive.
It’s this balancing act and the complexity comes from shifting factors, whether it’s regulatory landscape, new business models, or just the endless creative ways bad actors try to game the system. For me, it’s like a puzzle that never stops changing. You also have to help merchants navigate expectations.
They want fast approvals, they want to do the minimum amount of paperwork, and they want to understand what’s going on. When you’re tasked with ensuring the compliance and safety, there is a tension that this creates. And so, you have to be adaptive, as well as considerate to the entire ecosystem.
Ian Hillis
As a merchant going through this process, what are some of the things that a payment processor might be looking for during this experience?
David Blair
Generally, a payment processor is looking for three main things. First, identity. So, is this merchant real? Second, legitimacy. Does the business model align with what you can support from compliance and industry standards? And third is just the risk profile. Are they operating in a space known for fraud, chargebacks, or other red flags?
Beyond that, you look for consistency. Is the information they provide matching up with what you find from external data sources? The goal isn’t to turn merchants away, but to make sure the ones we let through don’t jeopardize the integrity of the platform. And by doing this well, everyone feels confident moving forward.
Ian Hillis
That’s a really helpful foundation here, David. The audience can now understand the basics here.
Let’s move into your viewpoint. Where are some of the newer and more interesting things happening with product as it relates to the onboarding process? What are you seeing? What are you focused on? What are you learning?
David Blair
What I’m really excited about right now is that onboarding is evolving from this one size fits all checklist into something that’s much more adaptive. I’m seeing platforms introduce dynamic workflows that shift based on the merchant’s risk profile, their industry, or the number of locations they have.
Instead of making merchants jump through every single identical hoop, we’re tailoring the systems and that experience. For example, a low-risk merchant might sail through with just a few clicks, where a higher risk merchant might get a few extra verification steps. It speeds up approval for the good actors but also helps me focus my intention where it matters most.
I’m also fascinated by how feedback loops are coming back into play here. So, onboarding isn’t just a set it and forget it process. It’s learning from every merchant who comes through.
If the data shows that a particular question causes confusion, I can go ahead and tweak that. If I find certain documents are rarely ever needed, I can remove those from the flow. So, it’s about optimizing the experience guided by what we’re seeing in real time, not just guesswork and static policies.
Why all this matters, you should be asking. It’s because responsive onboarding flows can make the difference between a merchant saying, this is too hard, or wow, I’m already up and selling. So, the best onboarding system feels less like an exam and more like a friendly guide where you’re helping merchants through onboarding to the platform without unnecessary friction.
Ian Hillis
I know you’re a pretty data-driven guy in the conversations I’ve had across all of this. What should folks be measuring this on? Are we marching towards 100% auto approval rate? Or how do you measure success as it relates to some of the pieces you mentioned there? What are we aiming to solve?
David Blair
First off, so when you’re evaluating a payments provider, asking those questions about auto approval rates or when a human needs to get involved, how long does that take? The answers will give you insight into how advanced their current tools are. So, if someone tells you that auto approval rate is 100%, they’re just lying to you.
With the tools and information out there right now, you won’t be able to do that completely. But there are other questions you can ask. You can ask how you adjust the onboarding flow for different types of merchants.
You can ask them how you learn from past data and change the steps or what happens when new regulations come into effect. How are you making that process easy for me? Those types of questions can help you see how prepared a vendor is to help you get up and running and continue operating your business.
Ian Hillis
If we shift focus a little bit to the software platform itself, how can a software platform prepare their customers for a more seamless merchant underwriting process? What tips might you have to make that as seamless as possible for that end customer of the software platform?
David Blair
You have to set the stage early. I think that’s probably one of the most crucial steps. Before the merchants even begin applying, I want them to know what to expect, the kinds of documents they might need, the reason those documents are important, and a realistic timeline that they’ll be up and running. The transparency turns the underwriting stage from this mysterious hurdle into just a straightforward checkpoint for them.
When merchants understand why, then they’re much less likely to get frustrated and abandon the process. From a practical standpoint, tools that pre-fill known information can save everyone time. If I already have the basic data about a merchant, why make them enter it again? Similarly, providing instructions and validating input details help catch mistakes early.
It’s all about reducing friction so that by the time they’ve uploaded documents and confirmed details, everything feels logical and necessary rather than arbitrary and burdensome. I’d also advocate for testing the onboarding journey regularly. You can run test accounts through your onboarding process and see where people stumble.
Ask real merchants for feedback. Do steps feel unnecessary? Could instructions have been more clear? And iterate on this feedback and continually refine the experience. It doesn’t have to be a one-off improvement you make, but a mindset of continuous optimization.
Finally, and I think this applies pretty much everywhere, but communication is everything. If a document is missing or incorrect, merchants should know right away. Ideally through a real-time alert or a dashboard that shows them exactly what they need to do next.
When issues are surfaced promptly, merchants can fix them fast and really maintain that momentum that you want to have as they onboard onto the system. In the long run, just preparing customers means that you turn underwriting from a chore into a moment of reassurance about your platform. They feel protected, informed, respected, and it lays the groundwork for a long relationship.
Ian Hillis
That’s incredibly insightful. David, as we start to wrap up here from end-of-the-time perspective, any parting thoughts for software platforms on the general topic of merchant underwriting or onboarding? To your point, we’re talking about their customers, their lifeblood. Any questions they should be asking? Things to be aware of? Just final parting advice for the software platforms out there looking to learn more about this.
David Blair
For the customer experience, there’s the psychological difference between feeling monitored and feeling guided through underwriting. The importance of having an open dialogue with merchants and why no onboarding process is ever truly finished.
Just when you wrap up underwriting and onboarding, you, as a provider, need to continually monitor the risk of your entire portfolio, how it continues to evolve over time. You can use data-driven approaches to guide all this, to reduce the cognitive load on your merchants and your staff and really focus in on what matters. Merchant underwriting and onboarding is just the very first step in what should be a multi-year, if not multi-decade experience and relationship for you and the merchants.
Ian Hillis
Fantastic thought to conclude on.
David, I can’t thank you enough for being on the show and for finding time with us today.
David Blair
I appreciate the time, Ian. We’d love to talk with you again.
Ian Hillis
We want to be a trusted resource for software providers who are out there trying to make sense of Embedded Payments and finance to help them get the education they need to make the business decisions their customers and investors will thank them for. Thank you to everyone joining us today. And I look forward to continuing the conversation in our next episode.
