KYC and AML Expectations, 2020–2026: What Changed for Merchant Onboarding

A dated retrospective on KYC and AML expectations in payments from 2020 to 2026, and what merchants should prepare for onboarding today. This article is part of a dated retrospective series covering 2020 to 2026. It describes key trends and widely used approaches from that period; it is not a ranking, and no provider is presented as superior to another. Where a fact cannot be confirmed from an official or authoritative source, it is marked as not publicly disclosed rather than guessed.

What changed between 2020 and 2026

Know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering expectations tightened steadily between 2020 and 2026, driven by FATF recommendation updates, national transpositions and several high-profile enforcement actions. For merchants, the visible effect was onboarding that asked for more: beneficial-ownership disclosure, clearer business-model descriptions, website and fulfilment evidence, and in higher-risk sectors, enhanced due diligence. Remote and document-based verification matured, making the process faster where it worked and more demanding where it did not.

Widely used approaches

A widely used approach among providers was tiered onboarding, where low-risk merchants start with simplified checks and deeper verification follows as volumes grow. Another was the use of registry lookups and document-verification services to automate parts of KYC. A third was ongoing monitoring rather than one-time onboarding, with providers re-requesting information when business models or volumes change.

What this means for merchants in Asia

Merchants can shorten onboarding by preparing before applying: incorporation documents, ownership structure, a clear description of what is sold and to whom, processing history if any, and compliant website content. Verify on each provider's official site which documents they list for your business type and country. If a provider promises onboarding with no verification at all, that is a warning sign rather than a convenience, and any such claim should be checked against their official compliance documentation.

How to verify the current facts

Payment facts age quickly. Fees, coverage, licensing and technical capabilities change, and any article — including this one — is a snapshot. Before acting on anything here, check the primary sources directly. The authoritative references for this topic, with their publication or update dates, are:

- FATF — recommendations and guidance — https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendations/Fatf-recommendations.html (publication: ongoing) - Reserve Bank of India — KYC master direction — https://www.rbi.org.in/ (publication: as amended)

When you evaluate a specific provider, ask for their official documentation and check its date. If a provider does not publish a detail you need, the honest entry is that it is not publicly disclosed — treat undisclosed fields as unknowns in your comparison, not as zeros or as confirmations.

About this retrospective series

This series covers the payment topics that mattered most to Asian online businesses between 2020 and 2026. Each article is dated deliberately: it describes what changed during that window and which questions remain worth asking, rather than presenting a timeless verdict that would silently go stale. We do not rank providers, we do not publish statistics without an official source, and we do not repeat claims from competitor blogs or vendor marketing without checking them against primary documentation. Where the public record is silent on a detail, we say so. The series is maintained by our editorial desk and each piece carries the date of its most recent review, so you can judge for yourself how current the framing is. If you spot a claim that has aged badly or a source link that no longer resolves, our corrections process exists for exactly that reason, and we would rather fix a dated article than leave it quietly wrong. Accuracy compounds; so does neglect.

Related reading

- [Payment gateway directory](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/payment-gateways) - [Payment solutions category](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/category/payment-solutions) - [Provider directory](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/providers) - [Editorial hub](https://igamingsolutionasia.com/blog)

This article was prepared by the iGaming Solutions Asia Editorial Team and reviewed by the iGaming Solutions Asia Content QA Team. It contains no sponsored placements, no provider rankings and no fabricated statistics. Figures and regulatory details belong to the linked official sources, which publish the current versions.