Atlas - Choosing a model

The Atlas Suite is Verto's embedded finance API product, designed to help businesses offer payments, collections, FX, and accounts to their underlying clients without building the underlying infrastructure from scratch. It is built around two distinct models depending on your regulatory status, compliance infrastructure, and the nature of your underlying clients.

Choosing the right model before you integrate is important — the two models have different compliance requirements, onboarding flows, currency coverage, and relationship structures. If you are unsure which applies to your use case, contact [email protected] or speak to your account manager before starting your integration.

At a glance

Atlas for Fintech

Atlas for Fintech is designed for regulated financial institutions that want to embed Verto's payment and FX infrastructure to serve their own underlying clients. You retain the compliance relationship with your clients — Verto assesses your internal controls and places a level of reliance on your existing framework.

Before go-live downstream assessement must be completed, your sales/account manager can help with this. If you don't have a sales/account manager contact [email protected] to get one assigned.

Who it's for

• Fintechs, digital banks, and neobanks
• Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and Payment Service Businesses (PSBs)
• Money Service Businesses (MSBs) and Money Transfer Operators (MTOs)
• Brokers and financial intermediaries
• Any directly licensed and regulated financial institution

How the compliance model works

Before accessing Atlas for Fintech, your organisation must complete a Downstream Service Assessment — a review of your compliance framework conducted by Verto's compliance team. The outcome determines the level of reliance Verto places on your processes:

Core flows

Collections on behalf of (COBO) — receive funds into a sub-account on behalf of a corporate client. Supported for corporate underlying clients only. Funds are collected in Verto's name but allocated to the client's sub-account. All COBO flows must use sub-accounts — pure pooled solutions are not supported for this use case.

Payments on behalf of (POBO) — send payments from a sub-account on behalf of an underlying client. Supported for both corporate and individual underlying clients. This includes local payouts, SWIFT, and mobile money via Global Clearing.

When Atlas for Fintech is not suitable

The following scenarios should be redirected to Atlas for Platform:

• Your organisation operates under a partner's licence rather than a directly held licence
• You want to offer USD, GBP, or EUR sub-accounts — G10 currencies are only supported under the Platform model
• You provide services to other financial institutions (double nesting is prohibited)
• You want to collect on behalf of individual underlying clients
• You do not have an independent AML/FinCrime compliance function

Atlas for Platform

Atlas for Platform is designed for non-financial businesses that want to offer embedded financial services to their clients under Verto's licensing and infrastructure. Rather than relying on your compliance framework, Verto conducts full KYB/KYC on each sub-account directly — each of your clients becomes a direct Verto customer, accepting Verto's Terms & Conditions and consenting to your platform operating their account.

Who it's for

• B2B marketplaces, e-commerce platforms, and digital marketplaces
• Payroll and expense management platforms
• Software companies embedding financial features into their product
• White-label FX brokers
• Pre-regulated fintechs or businesses without a financial services licence
• Any regulated FI that cannot pass the Downstream Assessment for Atlas for Fintech

How the compliance model works

Under Atlas for Platform, Verto owns the financial services relationship with each sub-account. Every sub-account must pass Verto's full onboarding process (equivalent to KYC Level 3) and the director of each sub-account entity must accept Verto's Terms & Conditions before the account can be activated.

This means:

• You submit KYB/KYC data and documents for each client via API or the Verto platform
• Verto's compliance team reviews each application
• Once approved, a T&C acceptance link is sent to the nominated director of the sub-account
• The account becomes active once the director accepts

You do not need your own financial services licence to use this model — Verto's regulatory permissions cover the financial services provided to your clients.

Core features

Full currency coverage — because sub-accounts are direct Verto clients, the Platform model unlocks broader currency access including USD, GBP, EUR collection accounts in addition to emerging market currencies (NGN, KES, TZS, XOF, XAF, ZAR, AED).

FX markup — generate revenue on every FX conversion executed by your sub-accounts. Apply a universal margin, per-currency-pair margins, or trade-by-trade markups via API.

Fully embedded experience — your clients interact only with your platform. The financial infrastructure is powered by Verto but the experience is native to your product.

Onboarding sub-accounts

Sub-accounts can be created and onboarded via API (recommended for scale) or directly through the Verto platform. See the Sub-account creation & onboarding guide for full API details.

Side-by-side use case examples

Getting started

Once you have identified the right model, contact your account manager or [email protected] to begin the qualification process. Your account manager will guide you through the Downstream Assessment (for Atlas for Fintech) or the partner setup process (for Atlas for Platform) before you begin your API integration.