How Aplazo cut merchant review time by 98% with Niva
“Niva’s platform is the backbone of our merchant onboarding. Instead of manually reviewing applications and chasing documents, our team focuses on growth and building customer relationships.”
About
Aplazo is a Series B Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform in Mexico with over $175M in funding. They offer credit-free payment plans to help people gain more control over their money—while also helping merchants get more customers. By letting people pay in smaller amounts over time, Aplazo is changing what people can afford.
Challenge
Aplazo had to scale merchant onboarding without sacrificing 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.
- Incorrect or missing documents lead to days/weeks of back-and-forth. Over 60% of applications had to be resubmitted due to issues like blurry uploads or outdated address proofs. These triggered Requests for Information (RFIs) forced sales reps to chase merchants over WhatsApp and email. Additionally, operations teams had to review applications repeatedly, decreasing their efficiency by over 50%. The resulting friction led to abandoned applications and slowed growth.
- Manual reviews were slow and risky. Analysts spent over 20 minutes per application combing through complex legal and tax documents, websites, social media, SAT portals, and AML watchlists. Each analyst reviews 20+ applications per day, leading to fatigue and human errors that could expose the company to compliance risk.
- Hiring was the only way to scale. The only escape hatch was hiring more analysts—diverting budget and focus from other growth initiatives.
“Manually reviewing merchants was tiring—looking through endless documents, websites, and product lists to identify potential fraud was slow and taxing, increasing our risk of missing important details. We needed a KYB workflow that could grow with us.”
Jose Antonio Yañez, Operations Manager at Aplazo
Solution
Niva streamlines Aplazo’s onboarding with instant, reliable verification
Benefit #1: Real-time document validation eliminates submission errors
Niva validates each upload the moment it’s uploaded—flagging issues like outdated Address Proof or invalid tax status in seconds. Merchants correct issues on the spot, slashing RFI cycles and drop‑off. With correctly submitted applications, sales teams don’t need to chase customers to correct documents, and ops teams don’t have to re-review applications.
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Benefit #2: Faster, safer, and more efficient merchant screening with automation
Niva transformed Aplazo’s KYB process into a fast, seamless, and reliable workflow. The platform runs a full 360° review on every merchant, pulling data from public and private data sources like government registries, company websites, social media, and uploaded documents to assess compliance risks.
If everything checks out, the business is approved in minutes. If not, Aplazo’s team receives a detailed report with a complete audit trail—screenshots, source links, and flagged risks–so reviews are faster and more defensible.
By automating everything their team used to check manually (and more), Aplazo can now scale onboarding without adding headcount or burning out their ops team.
“Niva’s output is spotless. We get comprehensive verification results with a lot less time and effort. Real-time data validation has not only freed up all the hours we used to spend chasing merchants online, but we now see significantly less drop-off during the application process.”
Jose Antonio Yañez, Operations Manager at Aplazo
Results
Aplazo spends 98% less time reviewing applications with Niva
With Niva humming in the background, Aplazo turned onboarding from a bottleneck into a growth lever.
The impact on Aplazo’s operations has been dramatic:
- 98% reduction in review time
from 20 minutes to <2 seconds per review on average - 88% fewer incorrect or incomplete applications
from 70% of total applications to <8% - 30% increase in sales rep productivity
time directed from manual reviews to acquisition
Aplazo’s team can now focus on qualifying, closing, and building relationships with merchants, not just verifying compliance. All the while, merchants love the low-friction onboarding experience without disruptive RFIs.
“Combining our technology with Niva lets us hyperscale merchant growth while raising our compliance bar. Niva’s AI helps us deliver a seamless merchant experience from day one—building trust and supporting our continued expansion.”
Alex Wieland, Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer at Aplazo
