What is FICA?
Financial Intelligence Centre Act that was introduced in 2021. It was designed and implemented to help prevent money laundering and helps to identify and verify who you are dealing with from a financial perspective.
We have 7 common types of contracting parties that we collect FICA for when a merchant is onboarded through Peach.
1.Sole Proprietor/Partnership (registering in personal capacity/individual)
2.Private Company/(Pty) Ltd (registration number ending /07)
3.Personal Liability Company/Incorporation (registration number ending /21)
4.Closed Corporation/CC (registration number ending /23)
5.Non-Profit Company/NPC (registration number ending /08)
6.Non-Profit Organization/NPO (registration number 000-000NPO)
7.Trust (registration number IT 00/0000)
Background
Part of the onboarding process, the Merchant is requested via an email sent, to provide FICA documents.
On receipt of the relevant FICA documents, these are examined to ensure that the date is not older than 3 Months and that the name on the document matches that of the Trading name or Legal Entity name
On completion and verification of the documents, the FICA documents are uploaded to Google Drive and saved under the relevant Merchant name
How is FICA linked to Finance?
Before settlement can be made to Merchants, FICA compliance is one of the checks that needs to be confirmed.
Prior to settlement which occurs on Thursdays, Finance sends Ops the list of New merchants as well as Existing Merchants who have settlement due, with a request to confirm that FICA has been received and is on file
FICA Check Process
This list of merchants is shared within the team and the following is applied to check and advise if the FICA has been received:
*Check Google Drive for the relevant FICA by searching the entity name
*Check the respective Pipe viz SME/Automated/2.0 to see what phase the application is in to ensure they are compliant to receive settlement
*Applications in "Non-responsive" or "Lost" phases do not get settled
Once it has been established what phase the application is in, the response and the status of the application is noted. The response referred to is that it could either be in one of the following phases:
*Awaiting Risk Approval
*Lost
*Merchant Non-responsive
All Merchants who are "Awaiting Risk Approval" are sent to Internal Risk Team for action/response
Internal Risk Team will advise of Risk Approval, which will either indicate that settlement can proceed or where Risk is Pending
The initial list received from Finance is amended accordingly by removing Merchants from the list where "Risk's Pending" and indicating which Merchants have "Have FICA" and "No FICA"
This amended list is then sent onto FINANCE Team
Finance Team proceeds with the preparation of Settlement to Merchants who have FICA on file
This process re-occurs weekly as Merchants are moved from phase to phase and new Merchants are onboarded