Outcomes
70%
Reduced merchant monitoring workload
6
Migration time (In weeks)
Customer Success Story
Cashflows Reduced Merchant Monitoring Workload by 70% and Accelerated Onboarding with Ballerine
Customer:
Cashflows
Industry:
Merchant acquiring and payment processing
Solution:
Merchant Monitoring and Onboarding
Overview
Cashflows is a UK-based payments company headquartered in London and a principal member of Mastercard and Visa which authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The company provides card processing, an online payment gateway, in-person payments, and PayFac as a Service and BIN sponsorship for partners. Its risk operations team reviews new merchant applications and monitors the existing merchant portfolio against card scheme requirements.
Challenge
Recurring alert volume: Under its previous monitoring setup, the risk team handled the same alerts again each month. This repeated work consumed analyst capacity without adding new risk insight.
Fragmented alerts: The same merchant could generate multiple alerts across different risk categories.
Scheme monitoring requirements: As a Mastercard principal member, Cashflows needs to monitor its merchant portfolio in line with the Mastercard Merchant Monitoring Program (MMP).
Provider transition: Changing monitoring providers carried operational risk. The migration had to happen without disrupting ongoing monitoring or the onboarding pipeline.
Solution
Cashflows selected Ballerine as its MMSP for both new merchant applications and ongoing portfolio monitoring.
Ballerine provides to Cashlows AI-powered merchant website due diligence and ongoing risk monitoring, covering website content and business activities, prohibited and restricted products and services, card scheme compliance, potential transaction laundering, merchant misrepresentation, website transparency, reputational risk, and compliance with the financial institution's merchant acceptance policies.
These checks support merchant underwriting and ongoing oversight by identifying potential risks and compliance violations, with automated alerts and evidence-backed findings to facilitate investigation and remediation.
Ongoing monitoring: Ballerine avoids repopulating the same alerts each month, so the team reviews new and changed risk instead of reprocessing known cases.
New applications: Ballerine supports the review of new merchant applications, including higher-risk and complex cases, so analysts reach decisions faster while maintaining the same level of scrutiny.
"Since implementing Ballerine as our new MMMP provider for both new applications and ongoing monitoring, we've already seen around a 70% reduction in workload. We expect this efficiency to improve even further over time."
Results
Efficiency: Around 70% reduction in risk operations workload within the first few months and reduced alerts from 400-500 per month prior to Ballerine to ~ 30 in the last monitoring run with Ballerine.
*Ballerine alerts might include one or more risk indications
Implementation: Fully migrated in 6 weeks, including clearing the initial alerts. Cashflows chose to run the migration in three stages based on its internal considerations.
According to Stuart Cronin, the timeline could have been shorter if Cashflows had needed it. In addition, Stuart mentioned that "The migration and transition to Ballerine has also been one of the smoothest supplier implementations we've experienced in a long time. The process was straightforward, well managed and, importantly, the Ballerine team has always been available when we've needed support."
Conclusion
Within a few months of moving to Ballerine, Cashflows reduced its risk operations workload by around 70% and shortened decision times on new merchant applications without lowering its review standards.
The migration from its previous provider ran without disruption. With repeated monthly alert work removed, Cashflows' risk team can focus its capacity on new risk signals and on the complex applications that need analyst judgment. Cashflows expects the efficiency gains to grow as the partnership matures.
