Your platform has a community of users. If you are going to process payments for these users with Mangopay, they need to be created as users via the API.

Processing payments for your platform is a highly regulated activity. Mangopay has a legal obligation to:

  • Establish the identity of your users
  • Verify their identity if they wish to pay money out to their bank account

The obligations for users depend on who they are and what actions they are going to want to carry out on your platform. For this reason, Mangopay has created a system of user types and categories.

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Types

Mangopay provides payment services to platforms that serve both consumers and businesses. Therefore, there are two types of user:

  • Natural users, for individuals (i.e., natural persons) over the age of 18
  • Legal users, for entities like companies, organizations, and sole proprietors (i.e., legal persons)

Legal entities are defined and governed by the national legislation where they are based. To simplify this, Mangopay differentiates 4 types of legal user:

  • Business, like a company or corporation
  • Partnership, which is usually an association of sole proprietors
  • Organization, for non-profits and similar
  • Soletrader, which is a sole proprietor

To find out more details about which local entities are considered as which type, see the Requirements for legal users.

Caution - Partnership type is only for specific structures

The partnership type is designed for a specific kind of legal entity which typically doesn’t have a company number (making the Business type unsuitable). It is usually an association of sole proprietors.

Only the following are considered under the Partnership type:

  • Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts (GbR) in Germany

If the legal entity is not one of those specified above, even if the local legal name includes the notion of a ‘partnership’, it should be considered a Business. Incorrect submission as a Partnership will result in verification refusal and a request to recategorize the entity.