KYC vs identity verification

What businesses need to know

A new client has scanned their passport, taken a selfie and passed their identity check. You can now have more confidence about who you’re dealing with, but there may still be questions to answer before you take them on.

This is where the difference between identity verification and KYC matters. KYC stands for Know Your Customer. It covers understanding who your customer is, why they want to use your services and the risks involved in doing business with them. Checking their identity is one part of that process.

Goidentity helps bring several of these checks together, including identity verification, sanctions and PEP screening, and customer questionnaires. This can make it easier to gather the information you need, while your team remains responsible for reviewing the results and deciding what happens next.

Understanding the wider KYC process

The exact requirements vary by country and sector. For businesses subject to anti-money laundering rules, customer due diligence generally involves identifying and verifying customers, understanding the purpose of the relationship and identifying beneficial owners where relevant.

These are the people who ultimately own or control a business, or on whose behalf someone is acting. Your approach needs to reflect both the risks involved and the rules that apply to your business.

For example, imagine a law firm helping a client purchase a property. Verifying the client’s identity is an early step. The firm may also need to understand where the purchase money has come from and whether someone else is involved in the transaction. If a third party is providing the money, the team may need to ask more questions and request supporting evidence. The identity check won’t answer those questions on its own.

Screening results also need some thought. A potential sanctions match needs checking before you can decide whether it relates to your customer. A similar name alone isn’t enough to establish that it’s the same person.

A politically exposed person, or PEP, is someone who holds or has held a prominent public role. Being a PEP doesn’t mean they’ve done anything wrong. The additional checks required depend on the applicable rules and the risk involved. PEP status alone shouldn’t lead to an automatic rejection.

How Goidentity helps your team

For the team doing this work, the practical challenge is keeping everything manageable. Requesting documents by email, chasing replies and pulling results from different places can take time. It can also leave customers wondering what else they need to send.

With Goidentity, you choose the checks and questions you need for each verification. Your customer completes the selected steps remotely, and the results are brought together in a report for your team to review.

• Identity checks combine document checking, facial comparison and liveness checks to help establish identity.
• Sanctions and PEP screening provides information for your risk assessment.
• Custom questionnaires let you ask about the customer or the work you’re being asked to do. Their answers sit alongside the other results, although you may still need supporting evidence.
• GPS information records the device’s location when verification takes place. It doesn’t prove where someone lives.

Having the selected results together means your team has less to piece together from separate records. They can review what was checked and follow up on anything that needs a closer look.

KYC continues after onboarding

For businesses required to monitor ongoing customer relationships, this includes keeping relevant information up to date and reviewing activity against what they know about the customer.

Goidentity’s sanctions and PEP screening is a check at that point in time, so you’ll still need a process for ongoing monitoring where required.

Choosing a service that fits your business

Goidentity lets you choose the services you need and pay as you go, with no subscription or long-term contract. That can be useful for firms whose number of new clients changes from month to month.

If you’re comparing providers, ask to see the whole process, including the report your team will receive. If you work across countries, check which documents and markets the service supports and whether it me