Desk note
The five documents we expect in every BNPL application file
· Aisha Rahman
When a BNPL provider asks us to ‘just look at a few files,’ we still start with the same five artefacts. Not because every programme uses the same document names, but because every programme has to answer the same five questions: who applied, how they would pay, what they already owed, what they were told, and why the decision went the way it did.
Identity evidence is more than a NRIC number in a field. We look for the capture method, any mismatch with delivery or billing details, and whether a merchant-assisted flow used a photocopy that the customer never confirmed. Income evidence ranges from a payslip to a declared figure with no trail. Both can be legitimate under a written policy. Both have to be the method the policy actually allowed that day.
Existing commitments are where BNPL files most often go quiet. Other instalment plans, including plans with the same provider, may sit in a bureau extract that nobody opened, or in an internal table that the origination screen did not display. If the decision claims affordability, those balances belong in the file.
The fourth artefact is the customer-facing pack: screens, scripts, or PDFs with a version stamp. A generic terms PDF in a legal folder is not evidence that this applicant saw it. The fifth is the decision record — system, manual, or override — with a reason that matches the policy pack, not a later reconstruction.
Files that lack one of the five are not automatically ‘wrong.’ They are incomplete. Incomplete files are still findings, because they cannot support the story the programme tells about how it originates.