Who Experian is
Experian is a global data and credit information company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. It was formed in 1996 and became an independent listed company in October 2006, and its roots go back to 1826, when a group of London merchants began sharing information on customers who did not settle their debts.
For business customers in the UK, its APIs cover commercial credit and risk scores for companies and their directors, and Know Your Business checks that return the full corporate structure, directors, persons with significant control and ultimate beneficial owners. Businesses use them to onboard and assess the companies they deal with, which is why Experian is one of the credit and risk data providers our merchant onboarding module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Merchant onboarding
Verifies UK merchants and reads their credit risk: the company's structure, directors, persons with significant control and beneficial owners from the KYB API, and commercial credit and risk scores for the business and the people behind it.
How the connection works
One connector in the merchant onboarding module talks to Experian's UK business APIs with an access token. Experian's credentials stay in the platform's secrets, and the app never calls Experian directly.
The merchant applies
In your app, with the company name and number.
The business is verified
The UK KYB API returns the company's status and structure, its directors, persons with significant control and ultimate beneficial owners.
The people are checked
The directors and owners it names go through the KYC module's identity checks, in the same onboarding flow.
The credit is read
The Commercial Credit API adds credit and risk information for the business and for its directors and owners.
Your rules decide
Your underwriting rules read both results: clear cases are approved, the rest go to your underwriters with everything on one screen.
On the record
Every Experian result stays on the merchant's record in the backoffice, and every decision on it is in the audit log.
Next to other providers
Experian sits in the module's credit and risk data, next to Creditsafe and Dun & Bradstreet. Its UK KYB data can sit next to registry data from Kyckr or OpenCorporates, and its scores next to your own rules, all on one underwriting screen.
The underwriting screen and the rules belong to the module. Adding a provider next to Experian, or moving away from it later, does not change your app, and past results stay in the merchant's record with the provider that produced them.
When Experian fits best
A strong fit when
- Your merchants are UK companies, and you want structure, owners and credit from one provider.
- You need persons with significant control and beneficial owners checked as part of onboarding.
- You want credit information on the directors and owners behind a business, not only on the company.
Also worth a look
- Creditsafe or Dun & Bradstreet, for merchants outside the UK.
- A registry provider such as Kyckr, when your policy asks for official register documents.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Experian account and contract in place, for the business APIs your policy needs.
The checks
We set up with you which checks run for which merchants, and how the KYB results and credit scores feed your underwriting rules.
The keys
The API credentials go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else, and the module requests its own access tokens.
A full test run
The whole flow runs in Experian's API sandbox, from the application to the underwriting screen, before your first real merchant.
