Stripe KYC Guide

Stripe KYC Flow for Payouts

In order for you and your merchants to get paid for Orders placed through Violet, you will both need to connect a bank account. Violet handles this through Stripe Connect, and creates a Stripe Connect Express account used solely for this purpose.

Stripe Connect Express accounts are a core part of Stripe’s product offering and used by companies such as Doordash, Lyft, and Shopify to power their payment stacks. You can read more about it here: https://stripe.com/connect.

Violet specifically uses Stripe Express to ensure that Stripe handles the onboarding and provides you with the ability to control your own payout schedules and connected bank accounts. This information never leaves Stripe and this account is only used by Violet for payouts. Violet does not currently support linking existing Stripe accounts and the Stripe Express account is not a “full” business Stripe account. The benefit of this flow vs. a full Stripe onboarding flow is that the KYC process is much simpler than onboarding with a full business Stripe account.

The KYC flow for Stripe accounts varies depending on the type of business and country you or your merchant operate in. The flow below is a sample KYC flow for an “Individual” in the US. For a full list of KYC requirements per country, please refer to https://stripe.com/docs/connect/required-verification-information#US-full-individual—transfer.

A summary of the steps are as follows:

Merchant enters email address and phone number
Merchant selects business type (LLC, C-corp, etc.)
Merchant enters personal/entity details
Merchant connects a business bank account
Merchant hits submit. Payment onboarding is now complete ✅
You can go to channel.violet.io to check the connection health of this merchant and verify that payouts are configured by clicking their name and looking under the Payout Account tab.

KYC sample flow for US, Individual account:

Your merchant should enter the email address of the individual that they expect to be able to complete KYC Information. This is usually an individual with access to information such as Tax/Employer Identification numbers and other business details.
Stripe requires a phone number for multi-factor authentication. Your merchant should enter the phone number of the individual that they expect to be able to complete KYC Information. This is usually an individual with access to information such as Tax/Employer Identification numbers and other business details.
Select your business type. Merchant’s cannot change this later. The screenshots below show the possible options you can select. Each type of business has a different KYC flow.
The Merchant will then be required to add their personal details. This includes Social Security Numbers for any member that holds 25% or more of the company, and company information such as Tax/Employer Identification numbers.
The next step of the KYC process relates to their business details. Since we are in the “Individual” flow, this can just be their website.
Stripe will then ask them to connect a bank account. This is the bank account that will be used to payout funds to. If your merchant is international please see the note below.
Your merchant will then have to review and accept their details. Depending on the size of their business, Stripe may then also ask for additional verification documents.
After your merchant has completed this flow and submitted all their information, you can go to the merchants tab in your Channel Dashboard and verify that the payouts tab is marked as complete. Please note that it can sometimes take Stripe a few minutes or in rare cases even hours to process the information. You can use the refresh button to monitor updates.
You’re all set! You/your merchant will now be able to receive payouts for Orders placed through Violet. To change KYC information or configure their payout schedule, they can go to merchant.violet.io/settings/payments and click on “Go to Stripe”.