How aplazo.mx cut merchant review time by 98% with Niva
“Niva has streamlined our merchant onboarding process by automating document collection, merchant verification, and contract drafting. Before Niva, our ops team manually reviewed every application, and sales faced constant back-and-forth with customers to collect valid documents. Now, the process is automated, fast, low-friction, and efficient.”
Challenge
Aplazo needed to scale merchant onboarding without compromising compliance or overburdening their team
While Aplazo already had a dedicated merchant operations team, their KYB process was becoming unsustainable to support their explosive growth. Each merchant review consumed over 30 minutes, with analysts drowning in complex legal documents and content across a business’ website and social media.
More than 60% of submitted applications contained incorrect or incomplete documentation, forcing the ops team to initially reject them and sales reps to chase merchants through WhatsApp and email for correct paperwork.
This created a frustrating cycle of reviews, rejections, and resubmissions that wasted time for everyone involved and created an unsatisfying experience for Aplazo's customers.
- Incorrectly submitted applications led to significant delays and friction, often resulting in merchants abandoning the onboarding process altogether.
- Sales teams were burdened with non-revenue-generating tasks, losing focus on acquiring new merchants and growing Aplazo's market share.
The bottleneck wasn’t just about time—it was about lost growth opportunities.
"Manually reviewing merchants was time-consuming—going through documents, websites, and product lists to identify potential fraud was a slow and taxing process with a risk of overlooking important details."
Jose Antonio, Operations Manager at Aplazo
Solution
Benefit #1: Real-time document validation eliminates submission errors and RFIs
Niva's AI validates merchant documents instantly during the submission process, providing immediate feedback so that applicants can correct issues on the spot. This prevents incorrect applications from reaching the ops team, eliminating the costly cycle of rejections and resubmissions.
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Benefit #2: Automated, yet more reliable, merchant screening
The platform conducts thorough investigations of every merchant with the precision of a trained analyst, but without human fatigue or bias. It analyzes everything from legal documents to website content and product catalogs, maintaining consistent review quality while dramatically reducing processing time. Merchant diligence scales effortlessly as the number of applications grows.
Benefit #3: More capacity for sales teams to focus on acquiring new customers
Sales representatives no longer spend hours chasing merchants for correct documentation through WhatsApp and email. Instead, they can redirect this time—about 30% of their previous workload—to what matters most: building relationships with new merchants and growing the business.
"Despite extensive testing this past quarter, we didn't find errors in Niva's output."
Jose Antonio, Operations Manager at Aplazo
Results
Niva's AI transforms merchant diligence from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage. Aplazo integrated Niva in less than 4 weeks with zero engineering resources. Here's how:
The impact on Aplazo's operations has been dramatic:
- 98% reduction in manual review time
From 20+ minutes spent per review to less than 2 seconds spent per review on average - 88% fewer applications with incorrect or incomplete documents
From 70% incorrect submissions to less than 8% - 30% more sales rep productivity
Time redirected rom document collection to merchant acquisition
For BNPL providers, speed, accuracy, and low-friction during onboarding are crucial for staying competitive. Niva’s solution enables Aplazo to onboard merchants faster with stronger compliance and fraud measures—without the operational headaches of manual KYB and merchant due diligence.
"By combining our technology with Niva, we're better positioned to hyperscale merchant growth with an even higher standard for compliance and risk."
Alex Wieland, Co-founder & Chief Revenue Officer at Aplazo
About aplazo.mx
Aplazo is a leading Buy Now, Pay Later platform in Mexico, offering fair and transparent financial solutions to connect businesses and consumers. By providing flexible payment options without requiring credit cards, Aplazo empowers individuals to achieve financial freedom while enabling merchants to grow their customer base. For more information, visit www.aplazo.mx.
