Onboarding Friction with Smaller PSPs for Higher-Risk Merchants

Curious if others are seeing an increasing trend of smaller, more nimble PSPs tightening up their onboarding processes for merchants categorized as higher risk. It seems a few years back, these were the go-to for bespoke solutions and quicker turnaround, often at a slightly higher fee. Now, the KYB seems to be almost as rigorous as the larger incumbents, without necessarily offering the same level of institutional stability or deep liquidity. Is this regulatory driven, or are they simply maturing and derisking their portfolios more aggressively? It's making it harder to find reliable alternatives to the big players for niche payment flows, especially when you're dealing with anything outside of vanilla e-commerce. The due diligence requests are getting quite granular even for relatively low volume. Wondering if anyone has found a sweet spot lately between flexibility and genuine operational stability, particularly for cross-border transactions where a few days' delay can mean lost revenue.

Also, a related thought: are the fees for these 'higher risk' merchant accounts starting to converge across the board, or are the smaller PSPs still able to offer a competitive edge on that front once you're actually onboarded?