Who Creditsafe is
Creditsafe is a business credit data company. It started in Oslo, Norway, in 1997, to give small and medium-sized businesses instant access to company credit reports, and has since opened offices across Europe, the USA and Asia.
Its company credit reports bring together a credit score and a recommended credit limit, financial statements, directors, shareholders and group structures, and its compliance tools add KYB checks and PEP and sanctions screening. Businesses use it to check customers and suppliers before extending credit, and its Connect API puts the same data inside other systems, which is why it is one of the credit and risk data providers our merchant onboarding module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Merchant onboarding
Reads the credit risk of each merchant's company: a credit report with a score, a recommended credit limit, financials and directors, checked against your underwriting rules. After approval, it keeps watching the company and reports changes.
How the connection works
One connector in the merchant onboarding module talks to Creditsafe's Connect API. It signs in with credentials held in the platform's secrets and works with a token that expires after an hour.
The company is found
Once the registry checks have identified the merchant's company, the module finds it in Creditsafe by name, registration number or address.
The report is fetched
The module retrieves the company's credit report: the score, the recommended credit limit, financials, directors and shareholders.
Your rules read it
Your underwriting rules weigh the score and the report, and set the merchant's limits for the cases they can decide.
People decide the rest
Cases outside your rules go to your underwriters, with the Creditsafe report on the same screen as the registry and identity checks.
Monitoring starts
Approved merchants are added to Creditsafe's monitoring, which tracks changes, alerts and risk events on their companies.
Changes reach your team
When Creditsafe flags a change, the module raises it in the backoffice next to the merchant's activity, so your team can review the limits.
Next to other providers
Creditsafe sits in the module's credit and risk data, next to Dun & Bradstreet and Experian. Its report is one input among several: registry data, the owners' KYC checks and your own rules all feed the same decision.
The underwriting screen and the rules belong to the module. Adding a credit provider next to Creditsafe, or moving away from it later, does not change your app, and past reports stay in the merchant's record with the provider that made them.
When Creditsafe fits best
A strong fit when
- You want credit reports on companies in many countries from one API.
- You want a score and a recommended credit limit that your rules can use as they are.
- You want monitoring that keeps watching merchants after approval.
Also worth a look
- Dun & Bradstreet, when your teams already work with D-U-N-S Numbers or need company hierarchies.
- Experian, for UK merchants and credit checks on their directors.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Creditsafe account and contract in place, covering the countries your merchants come from.
The rules
We set up with you how the score and the report feed your underwriting: which results approve, which set limits and which go to review.
The keys
The Connect API credentials go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else, and the module renews its short-lived token itself.
A full test run
Creditsafe offers API access for testing and development, and the whole flow runs there before your first real merchant.
