Overview
What is a Payer?
A Payer is a party in an exchange of goods or services who makes a Payment. Payers are sometimes referred to as buyers or cardholders.
Payer Attributes
In Plastiq Connect, Payers are defined by a set of core attributes described below:
| Attribute | Description | API Field Name |
|---|---|---|
| Business Name | The Payer's business name, if a business | businessName |
| Location | The Payer's primary address, if a business | businessAddress |
| Business Owner or Consumer Name | The Payer's contact details: email, phone, first name, and last name It can include the business owner's contact information (if a business) or consumer's contact information | contact |
| Identity | The Payer's unique government-issued identifier(s): type and value An example would be a passport number, Driver's License number, a taxpayer identification number, etc See more below in Identity Types | identityDocuments |
| Status | The Payer's status in Plastiq Connect | status |
Know Your Customer, Know Your Business
In the Financial Services industry, the acronym KYC / KYB (Know Your Customer / Know Your Business) is a table-stake for any company managing the movement of funds on behalf of customers.
Financial Services companies are mandated by governments and Financial regulatory bodies to run comprehensive programs to verify their customers.
Plastiq Connect offers maximum flexibility to integrating platforms with regards to how much information they need to collect about their customers in order to make a Payment.
A Payer can be created with as little or as much information as you see fit in your platform experience, but know the tradeoff. Collecting less will often mean your customer may be asked for additional information down the road.
We'll talk more about this in the section below.
Collecting Payer Information
An email or phone is required at the very minimum in order to create a Payer with Plastiq Connect. Plastiq recommends to collect both email and phone for improved payment experience and payer verification. Our APIs leverage this information to run the appropriate KYC or KYB checks on the Payer.
However, there are instances where that narrow set of Payer details don't produce a sufficient KYC/KYB match. As a result, additional information might be needed to fulfill an unverified customer's Payment.
You can review the additional information that might be requested when a Payer fails to pass KYC or KYB in Documents.
Best Practices
Our advice for integrating platforms is to collect a Payer's name, address, and contact details during your onboarding experience to avoid friction for your customer down the road.
Sensitive Payer Data
PHI stands for Protected Health Information.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for personal health information held by covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information.
Managing Protected Health Information
Payments containing PHI data are restricted when using Plastiq Connect APIs. We recommend integrating platforms to design their payments experience accordingly to prevent the inclusion of PHI data alongside payment assets.
Updated over 2 years ago