What documents are normally required for corporate KYC?

Certificate of incorporation, articles or memorandum of association, register of directors, register of shareholders or UBO declaration, proof of registered office, identity documents and proof of address for each director and UBO, and evidence of source of funds. Higher-risk relationships also require source-of-wealth documentation.

Can KYC be performed remotely?

Yes. Most jurisdictions permit electronic identity verification using government-issued IDs and liveness checks. The EU eIDAS Regulation and the FATF Guidance on Digital Identity (2020) both support remote onboarding when the verification system meets defined assurance levels. Crypto venues and neobanks have made remote KYC the default.

Glossary/Compliance/Know Your Customer

Compliance

Know Your Customer

KYC

Know Your Customer is the set of identification, verification, and risk-assessment procedures regulated firms must run before onboarding a customer.

What KYC is

Know Your Customer (KYC) is the operational process behind anti-money-laundering law.

Before a regulated entity (bank, payment processor, broker, crypto exchange, money service business) can transact for a customer, it must collect identifying information, verify it against an independent source, understand the nature of the expected business relationship, and assess the customer's money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk.

The pillars of KYC come from FATF Recommendation 10 and are implemented locally. In the United States the rule is the Customer Identification Program (CIP) under section 326 of the USA PATRIOT Act and 31 CFR 1020.220. In the EU the source is the Anti-Money Laundering Directives, currently 6AMLD supplemented by the new AML Regulation (Regulation 2024/1624) which takes direct effect from 2027.

In the UK the Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (as amended) implement the same requirements.

KYC is not one-and-done. It includes initial onboarding, ongoing monitoring of transactions for unusual patterns, periodic refresh of customer information, and triggered re-verification when risk factors change. Intensity is calibrated through Customer Due Diligence for normal-risk customers and Enhanced Due Diligence for higher-risk relationships.

When you will meet KYC

You will encounter KYC every time you open a corporate or personal bank account, sign up for a payment processor like Stripe or Adyen, list a company on an exchange, accept investment from a regulated fund, or onboard with a regulated crypto venue. For company formations, KYC reviews the directors, the UBOs, the source of funds, and often the source of wealth.

Where this comes up in our guides