Why lifecycle matters
Most merchant risk problems are lifecycle problems: the wrong merchant onboarded, the wrong policy applied, the wrong signal missed, the wrong exit executed too late.
A staged lifecycle turns each of those into a checkpoint you can prove.
Stages we recommend
Onboarding: KYC complete, restricted-vertical check, initial risk score, MID provisioned.
Ramp: elevated monitoring for the first N transactions or M days.
Steady-state: baseline rules, chargeback and fraud ratios inside programme thresholds.
Watched: any material deviation triggers watchlist status, RFI, and (optionally) reserve hold.
Offboarded: closure with reason, evidence retained, audit trail preserved for retention period.
Policy per stage
Onboarding: which documents are required? Who signs off? Reserves default?
Ramp: what are the elevated thresholds? For how long?
Steady-state: which rules run? What's the escalation matrix?
Watched: how does the RFI fire? What's the SLA on the merchant response?
Offboarded: what evidence is exported and archived?
How OneAI lands this
MID Risk Snapshot: nightly, multi-factor score with tier (Low / Medium / High / Critical).
MID Governor: proposals for reserve, threshold, and descriptor changes, versioned.
RFI Automation: structured merchant response requests when a stage change needs merchant input.
Audit trail: every stage transition recorded with actor, reason, and evidence.