How Pinch Payments Achieved a 300% Increase in Merchant Onboarding by Unifying KYC, KYB and AML

Pinch Payments is an Australian payment facilitator serving over 2,000 merchants across Australia and New Zealand. Founded in 2017 and now part of Fiserv, a Fortune 500 global payments and financial services technology company, Pinch helps businesses get paid faster through automated invoice payments, direct debit, and card processing integrated with Xero, QuickBooks, and MYOB. Its Glassbox platform takes this further, giving software companies the infrastructure to become payment facilitators themselves, with built-in merchant onboarding, identity verification, fee management, and transaction monitoring.

As Pinch scaled, so did the compliance burden. Merchant onboarding was entirely manual. Every KYC check was done by hand. Every document was chased individually. And every new merchant meant another 30 minutes of work the compliance team could not get back.

Within three months of going live with FrankieOne, Pinch increased merchant onboarding capacity by 300%, reduced KYC turnaround from 4 days to under 24 hours, and cut individual compliance reviews from 30 minutes to less than 5.

Impact at a glance

• 300% increase in daily merchant onboarding capacity (from 5 to 20 merchants per day)
• KYC turnaround reduced from up to 4 days to under 24 hours
• Individual onboarding reviews cut from 30 minutes to less than 5 minutes
• Shift from fully manual document checks to automated KYC, KYB, and AML/CTF screening
• ASIC lookups, beneficial ownership reporting, and UBO verification now automated through a single platform
• Scalable, multi-jurisdiction compliance infrastructure supporting 2,000+ merchants across Australia and New Zealand

The challenge: Manual compliance that couldn't keep up with growth

Before FrankieOne, Pinch ran its entire merchant onboarding process by hand. The compliance team manually obtained documents from every new merchant, pulled ASIC reports separately, and cross-referenced everything line by line. There was no automated verification, no pass rate data, and no centralised audit trail.

The team considered a check successful if the merchant was willing to hand over documents on the first request. That was the bar. Each check took around 30 minutes. The back and forth to obtain the right documents stretched to four days. And the compliance team had no way to confirm whether what they were looking at was legitimate or not.

As volumes grew, the cracks became impossible to ignore. The same repetitive outreach, the same manual ASIC lookups, the same document matching, repeated for every single merchant. Pinch needed to move from treating compliance as a manual gatekeeping exercise to building it as automated infrastructure that could meet AUSTRAC obligations and acquirer requirements at scale.

Why FrankieOne: One platform for identity verification, KYB, and AML

Pinch was looking for a single provider that could cover KYC, KYB, AML/CTF screening, sanctions and PEP checks, beneficial ownership reporting, and credit checks, all through one integration. Managing multiple vendors for each of those capabilities was exactly the problem they were trying to leave behind.

FrankieOne stood out for several reasons:

• Comprehensive coverage: KYC, KYB, AML/CTF screening, sanctions and PEP checks, document verification, credit checks, and UBO reporting through a single API
• Ease of integration: an API-first approach that let Pinch embed compliance directly into the Glassbox merchant onboarding workflow
• Local expertise: a strong Australian team with deep knowledge of the regulatory environment, including ASIC and AUSTRAC reporting obligations
• Genuine collaboration: FrankieOne actively gathered feedback and worked toward shared outcomes, including product pre-launch reviews that Pinch had only ever heard about in theory
• Multi-jurisdiction from day one: a single integration that lets Pinch switch on new markets without rebuilding compliance workflows or onboarding separate vendors for each geography

"What stood out about FrankieOne was the genuine willingness to collaborate and build something tailored to our business. The results followed quickly. Within three months we saw a 300% increase in onboarding capacity and cut merchant turnaround from four days to under 24 hours."

Felix Tan, Risk and Compliance Manager, Fiserv

Time to value: Results within three months

Pinch saw measurable value within the first three months of going live. KYC checks that previously required manual document collection, ASIC lookups, and line-by-line matching were now running automatically through FrankieOne's platform. Pass rates started climbing immediately as automated workflows reduced failures caused by inconsistent manual processes.

For a team that previously had no baseline data on verification outcomes, going from zero visibility to automated tracking was a step change in itself.

Operational shift: From manual checks to exception management

The most significant internal change was how the compliance team spent its time. With FrankieOne:

• Primary KYC and KYB checks are automated at the point of registration
• Beneficial ownership and UBO reports pinpoint exactly what documentation is required, replacing guesswork with precision
• Sanctions and PEP screening run automatically as part of the onboarding workflow
• The compliance team now focuses on reviewing exceptions and higher-risk merchants rather than processing every application manually
• Documents are collected during the registration phase itself, so merchants arrive ready to be verified rather than triggering days of back-and-forth

Onboarding that previously took days now resolves within 24 hours for most merchants. Clear document requirements are communicated upfront during registration, removing the back-and-forth that used to delay every application. The result is a faster path to transacting and significantly less friction for merchants getting started on the Pinch platform.

The result: Compliance infrastructure built for scale

By replacing manual processes with FrankieOne's platform, Pinch built the compliance infrastructure it needed to support its growth across Australia and New Zealand. Automated identity verification, KYB, AML screening, document verification, and beneficial ownership checks are now embedded directly into Glassbox, giving Pinch and its PayFac customers a single, auditable onboarding flow.

Critically, the same integration that powers compliance in Australia can be switched on for new markets without rebuilding workflows or onboarding new vendors. As Pinch expands into additional jurisdictions, the compliance layer scales with it.

For a company serving over 2,000 merchants and powering PayFac enablement across multiple jurisdictions, scalable fraud prevention and compliance is not optional. It is the foundation that everything else runs on.

"If you are a company that is genuinely wanting to grow, FrankieOne is the partner that you will not regret."

Felix Tan, Risk and Compliance Manager, Fiserv

Want to see how unified identity verification, KYB, and AML compliance can power your merchant onboarding at scale?

 Talk to the FrankieOne team.