Onboarding Friction for PSPs – What's Acceptable?

Running a fintech focused on cross-border payments, we're constantly evaluating new payment service providers to diversify our rails and optimize costs. One recurring frustration is the onboarding process itself. It's not just the KYC/KYB document deluge, which is expected to an extent, but the sheer duration and opaque nature of the approval cycles.

We recently went through an onboarding with a promising PSP for SEPA transfers. Submitted everything required, went through several rounds of clarification, and it still took north of six weeks to get fully activated. During that time, our volume forecasts for that corridor went unserviced through them. This isn't an isolated incident; we've seen similar timelines with others, especially for exotic currency corridors or higher-risk jurisdictions. I understand the regulatory burden, but it often feels like there's significant room for efficiency improvement without compromising compliance. How are others in the 'Fintech Founders' space managing these delays? Are you building out internal teams solely for PSP onboarding, or are there specific red flags you look for early on to weed out the slow movers? Interested in practical strategies to accelerate this.