Know Your Customer (KYC)? What About Know Your Business (KYB)?

by We expand on the lesser-known form of payment identification, KYB, and how it is critical for financial companies to remain safe and compliant.

Share this post

What is KYB?

KYC is where companies identify their customers by verifying their identities to prevent money laundering, terrorist financing, and tax crimes. KYB shares similar features but is used for business verification instead of customer verification.

In sum, KYB is the process of vetting organisations you are considering or are currently doing business with, whether they’re a supplier, customer, or partner. More so, this includes the people running them. And while KYB is becoming essential for industries working within the world of fintech, any company that serves or works with another business (like a B2B supplier) can benefit from deploying KYB.

Why is KYB Important?

KYB is relatively new within fraud mitigation because business relationships were not subject to the same scrutiny as individuals. This led to many criminals setting up fake companies to defraud other businesses or, more commonly, leveraging legitimate businesses to hide their identities. In addition, since business records were hardly assessed before the introduction of KYB, fraudsters could launder money, commit fraud, or fund terrorism without being personally screened or creating a paper trail.

In 2016, nearly 15 years after the introduction of KYC, the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) addressed this problem by launching new KYB regulations within its Customer Due Diligence Requirements. So now, any company working with another business has access to a standardised method that verifies the company itself is legitimate! What better way to weed out businesses that are high-risk, illegitimate, or associated with criminal black market activity!?

Not a One-and-Done Kinda Deal

Just like KYC, you can’t verify business customers once during onboarding and think the process is complete, as that only gives you a single snapshot of the company. What about in 6 months or one year? Will they still pass an authentication check, then?

To remain compliant, you need to check each business you work with continuously. This means ongoing monitoring, periodically checking that your partners have not appeared on sanctions lists and watchlists, and maintaining updated customer information.

However, KYB is not as easy as KYC, as you must verify the business entity and its ultimate beneficial owners. Moreso, if the business has multiple owners, you’ll need to KYC each individual.

“Businesses are significantly more complex to verify than individuals, as they can span multiple geographic borders, tax regimes, and regulatory environments. Often, verifying these entities requires you to either ask the business to submit information or manually search for disparate data and official documents in different public and private systems, like state or national business records. This is particularly difficult in the United States, where there is no singular source of official business data.” (Fintech Times)

What happens when a person is responsible for investigating, cross-checking, and examining complex legal documents? Mistakes. This is why the automatisation of Know Your Business procedures is increasing, shifting the processes from humans to computers and reducing errors.

A Note on Embedded Finance Providers

What do you do if you don’t trust your customers? Click here to read the full post over on our website, okaythis.com.

logo-1
Article by Okay

More To Explore

Membership

Are you a member of The Payments Association?

Member benefits include free tickets, discounts to more tickets, elevated brand visibility and more. Sign in to book tickets and find out more.

Welcome

Log in to access complimentary passes or discounts and access exclusive content as part of your membership. An auto-login link will be sent directly to your email.

Having trouble signing?

We use an auto-login link to ensure optimum security for your members hub. Simply enter your professional work e-mail address into the input area and you’ll receive a link to directly access your account.

First things first

Have you set up your Member account yet? If not, click here to do so.

Still not receiving your auto-login link?

Instead of using passwords, we e-mail you a link to log in to the site. This allows us to automatically verify you and apply member benefits based on your e-mail domain name.

Please click the button below which relates to the issue you’re having.

I didn't receive an e-mail

Tip: Check your spam

Sometimes our e-mails end up in spam. Make sure to check your spam folder for e-mails from The Payments Association

Tip: Check “other” tabs

Most modern e-mail clients now separate e-mails into different tabs. For example, Outlook has an “Other” tab, and Gmail has tabs for different types of e-mails, such as promotional.

Tip: Click the link within 60 minutes

For security reasons the link will expire after 60 minutes. Try submitting the login form again and wait a few seconds for the e-mail to arrive.

Tip: Only click once

The link will only work one time – once it’s been clicked, the link won’t log you in again. Instead, you’ll need to go back to the login screen and generate a new link.

Tip: Delete old login e-mails

Make sure you’re clicking the link on the most recent e-mail that’s been sent to you. We recommend deleting the e-mail once you’ve clicked the link.

Tip: Check your security policies

Some security systems will automatically click on links in e-mails to check for phishing, malware, viruses and other malicious threats. If these have been clicked, it won’t work when you try to click on the link.

Need to change your e-mail address?

For security reasons, e-mail address changes can only be complete by your Member Engagement Manager. Please contact the team directly for further help.

Still got a question?