Know Your Customer (KYC)

A common customer-identification protocol used in corporate finance.

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a common identification requirement for customers in corporate finance industries, especially banks. The goal of these requirements is to ensure that company clients are real people who can be traced and linked with physical locations and associations. Therefore, KYC usually revolves around the verification of the personal information provided by clients during registration processes.

There are different standards for KYC, depending on the institution that requests it from customers. However, every KYC verifies information such as customer name and age using official documents. The latter include government-issued identity cards (ID), Driver’s License, Voter ID cards, Social Security Number, and several more.