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Compliance

Compliance at a payment provider covers three separate rulebooks. Regulatory obligations apply first, at onboarding: Know Your Customer verification of the business, its directors and its beneficial owners, sanctions screening, and monitoring that does not stop at approval. Card network rules govern refunds versus voids, receipt content, chargeback response deadlines and surcharging conditions; they come from the networks rather than the processor, so no provider can waive them. PCI DSS is the third — a contractual security standard, renewed annually, scoped by how card data moves through your systems.

  • Know Your Customer at onboarding
  • Monitoring does not stop at approval
  • Restricted and prohibited categories
  • Card network rules are not the processor’s
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Watch how it works…Try it, edit values and click buttons

Edit amount and click Send requestSending request to /v1/payments…201 Created, payment approved for 24900 cents

API request

POST /v1/payments
{
  "amount": 24900,
  "currency": "CAD",
  "capture": true,
  "metadata": { "order_id": "4821" }
}

Response

Click "Send request" to see the API response

Processing payment…

201 Created
{ "id": "pay_7xK2m", "status": "approved", "amount": 24900 }

Demonstration data only

In detail

  • Know Your Customer at onboarding

    Business identity, beneficial ownership and sanctions screening, applied during merchant onboarding as required of Canadian payment providers. Having the documents ready is the single biggest factor in how fast an account opens.

  • Monitoring does not stop at approval

    A material change in what a business sells, where it ships or how much it processes can trigger a further review, because the obligation is to keep the understanding of a merchant current.

  • Restricted and prohibited categories

    Some activities cannot be supported by any Canadian payment provider, and others require additional review. The acceptable use policy sets out illegal transactions, fraud facilitation and restricted merchant categories.

  • Card network rules are not the processor’s

    Refund versus void, receipt content, chargeback response deadlines and surcharging conditions come from Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Interac. A provider can explain them and cannot waive them.

  • PCI DSS is contractual, not statutory

    It is a security standard imposed through card network agreements, renewed annually by attestation, and scoped by how card data moves through your own systems rather than by your industry.

  • Documentation published, not requested

    The KYC policy, acceptable use policy, privacy policy, data processing addendum, subprocessors page and vulnerability disclosure route are published pages a reviewer can read before contacting anyone. Section 9 of that page publishes the register naming the subprocessors it evidences and sets out the route for obtaining the current full list.

Related pages

Questions about Compliance

Can I add a surcharge to card payments?

Only where the network rules and the law where the sale happens permit it. The amount cannot exceed the lesser of your cost of acceptance and the cap the network rules impose, cannot be applied to Interac debit, which may not be surcharged at all, has to be disclosed before the customer authorizes the transaction and shown as a separate line on the receipt, and any advance notice the rules require has to be given. Surcharging is restricted or prohibited in some places you may sell, including Québec under consumer protection law. A discount for cash is not a surcharge.

How do I find out whether my type of business can be supported?

The acceptable use policy sets out prohibited activities and restricted categories. Where you are not certain your business falls outside it, or where a restricted business needs approval, send the question to [email protected] before the first transaction rather than after it. Approval sought afterwards is a much worse conversation for everyone.

What documents will be asked for at onboarding?

Legal and operating name, business number, incorporation and ownership documents, addresses, the identity of directors and beneficial owners, government identification where verification requires it, and the processing profile of the business. Anti-money-laundering law and the card network rules require a payment provider to verify who it is onboarding, which is why the list is not negotiable.

Which privacy law applies, and what does it mean for my records?

Privacy is governed by PIPEDA, and by the provincial privacy legislation that applies where the business operates. It also means some records survive a deletion request: identity and onboarding records are retained for the period anti-money-laundering legislation requires of a reporting entity, and dispute evidence is retained under the card network rules.

What is the difference between a void and a refund?

A void cancels an authorized transaction before the batch settles, so it never posts to the cardholder’s statement and no money moves. A refund returns money on a transaction that has already settled and appears as a separate credit. Which one is available depends on where the transaction sits relative to batch close, which is why a question that looks financial turns out to be about terminal timing.

We are a platform onboarding our own sellers — whose obligation is the verification?

Under a platform model your application onboards sub-merchants onto connected accounts and controls the experience, while RapidCents collects the Know Your Customer documents and surfaces verification status. The verification itself is RapidCents’ obligation. What your application must not do is route business that the acceptable use policy excludes.

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