KYC (Know Your Customer)

KYC simply means Know Your Customer. It is a process that all businesses are required to carry out to be able to identify the customers they are doing business with. Some forms of KYC are done before businesses enter into a business relationship with the customer, and incremental KYC is done during the period of said business relationship.

KYC ranges from collecting information as simple as the name, phone number, email address, and home address of the customer to collecting more private information and verifying this personal data, also known as Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

Examples of PII include name, date and place of birth, biometric information and Bank Verification Number (BVN) in Nigeria, Tax Identification Number in Ghana or South African ID number in South Africa. Acceptable KYC in Kenya are National Identity Cards, Passports, and Driver's Licenses. PII also includes any other information that can be used to trace an individual. Information such as medical records, educational information, financial information (including account name and number), and employment information are considered PII.

The main objective of KYC is to know everyone you are transacting with and also to enable you to provide information about these people if you are requested to do so by the relevant authorities. It also helps prevent businesses (financial and non-financial) from being used by criminal elements for money laundering, fraud and other corruption-related activities.

For a business to know that they have carried out good KYC on their customers, the business would have collected and verified multiple Personally Identifiable Information (PII) like full name, Bank Verification Number (for Nigerian businesses) or Tax Identification Number (for Ghanaian businesses) from their customers. At the very least, businesses should have the following information about their customers:

• First name

• Last name

• Email address

• Phone number

We've highlighted more business-specific examples of what good KYC looks like for different businesses.

Betting companies are required to know a lot about their customers. In order for these companies to carry out good KYC, they have to collect the following information from their customers:

• Full name

• Email address

• Government-issued ID card

• Date of birth

• Gender

• Telephone number

• Bank account name and number

Please note that you can request the information above incrementally. For example, you can choose to request and verify customers' bank account numbers and bank account names when the customers are trying to make withdrawals. Also, you can request customers' Bank Verification Numbers to help resolve fraud claims easily.

• Full name

• Date of birth

• Gender

• Telephone number

• Bank Verification Number

• Bank account name and number

More information can be collected from the customer at your discretion or based on the activity of the customer on your platform. For example, you can collect the customer's government-issued ID if the customer's activity draws your attention.

• Full name

• Telephone number

• Home address

• Email address

Information provided by customers can be verified against information contained in several databases available in the country in which you operate.

For example, Nigerian businesses can verify customer information by consulting the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS) databases, among many others. Also, Ghanaian businesses can verify customer information by consulting the Ghana Revenue Authority database and some other available databases.

To help businesses easily go through this customer information verification process, Paystack provides a number of endpoints that can be used. Here's a list of identity verification endpoints that Paystack currently provides:

• Verify Account Number: We provide a way for businesses to verify a customer's account number using the Verify Account Number endpoint.

• Resolve Card BIN: We provide a way for businesses to verify a customer's card BIN using the Resolve Card BIN endpoint.

The documents linked below provide more information about the various regulations around KYC in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa: