This change released on December 1st, 2023 at 12pm ET.

We've made an update to our create merchant and merchant application flows to help reduce duplicate merchant creation.

We've separated the merchant's Friendly Name from the merchant's DBA Name by adding a dba_name field to the Create Merchant request and the Update Merchant Application request. The name field is now a unique identifier.

Previously, the merchant's name would appear in the Business DBA field on the merchant onboarding component. It was uneditable by the merchant and provided by the platform on the Create Merchant request.

previous capability on the merchant onboarding component

Since two merchant's could have the same Business DBA Name, we wanted to separate the merchant's friendly name from their DBA name to ensure uniqueness across merchants.

The merchant's friendly name identifier must be a UNIQUE name across all merchants on a platform. The name is uneditable by the merchant and provided by the platform on the Create Merchant request.

The dba_name is now editable in the merchant onboarding component and appears in the Business DBA field.

new capability on the merchant onboarding component

If the dba_name field is omitted in the Create Merchant request, it will default to the name value.

All active merchants and in progress merchant applications have been backported with the dba_name set to the name value.

Changelog

Merchant name vs DBA name