KYC (Know Your Customer)

KYC/KYB (Know Your Customer / Know Your Business) plays a critical role in ensuring regulatory compliance, designed to help financial institutions and programs verify the identities of customers and businesses. Treasury Prime supports integration with a wide range of KYC/KYB vendors, enabling Programs to connect their preferred, bank-approved provider into the account opening process.

KYC is a critical component of regulatory compliance, ensuring that financial institutions and programs verify the identities of their customers. Treasury Prime supports two approaches:

1. KYC through Treasury Prime – A built-in verification process that runs as part of account opening, plus Incremental KYC for running verification without opening an account.
2. Third-Party KYC Provider (BYO KYC) – Integrate your preferred, bank-approved third-party KYC/KYB vendor into the account opening process.

Any changes to how KYC runs — including using a less strict flow or a new provider — must be approved by the bank and coordinated between the bank and your KYC provider.

Running KYC through Treasury Prime

There are two primary methods of running KYC through Treasury Prime.

During the account application

KYC is a standard part of opening a bank account. When you use /apply/kyc for a business or person(s) and the account product includes KYC, verification runs as follows:

1. Business applications
   1. Individual persons are run through KYC first. All of them run unless specified otherwise.
      • kyc_fail_fast stops KYC on an application as soon as one person fails, allowing you to fail the entire application (or send it to manual review) without running the remaining people.
   2. If any person fails, the application is rejected.
   3. If no person fails, the business is then run through KYC:
      • Passes → the application goes to manual review or approved, depending on the status of the individual persons.
      • Manual review → the application goes to manual review.
      • Fails → the application is rejected.
2. Personal applications
   1. The person is passed through KYC automatically — passing, failing, or going into manual review. The application is approved, put into manual review, or rejected based on that KYC result.

Using Incremental KYC

Incremental KYC lets you run KYC without opening an account.

• A program can see which KYC products are available to it via /apply/kyc_product. If none are available, the list is empty.
• A program can retrieve the details of a specific KYC product via /apply/kyc_product/{id}.
• A program can indicate which KYC product a person or business should go through. If none is specified, Treasury Prime uses the program’s default KYC product.

Key distinctions

• Any changes to KYC need to be approved by the bank and coordinated between the bank and your KYC provider.
• Whether or not a less strict version of KYC is approved, Treasury Prime still needs to collect the key pieces of information required by the /apply endpoint to open an account.

Incremental KYC use cases

• Companion card program – Lets primary and secondary cardholders on the same account go through different KYC products. For example, a secondary cardholder can be assigned a KYC product with different requirements than the primary cardholder’s, subject to bank approval.
• Authorized cardholder addition – Adds authorized users to existing accounts using a lighter KYC flow. The process involves setting up a new KYC waterfall, creating a person application, running incremental KYC, and adding the person to the account.

KYC results are valid for 30 days and will be reused for any subsequent applications within that timeframe.

Bring Your Own (BYO) KYC

Programs can seamlessly integrate their bank-approved KYC vendor with Treasury Prime’s platform using the /kyc endpoint to associate KYC results with a person or business application.

Applications remain in a pending status until the Program provides a definitive KYC outcome (ok/error/pending). The KYC outcome drives/informs account opening automation. For multi-person applications, Treasury Prime leverages a conservative approach - the least favorable individual KYC outcome determines the final application result. For example, if any individual yields a KYC result of error, the corresponding account will not be opened.

The program must first get its KYC vendor’s permission to share results with Treasury Prime.

BYO KYC apply workflows

• personal-with-kyc
• business-with-kyc

BYO KYC Integration Process - Step by Step Guide

1. Create Person Application(s): Use the /apply/person_application endpoint to register individual applicants.
   • Note: physical_address is mandatory for all BYO KYC person applications.
2. Create Business Application (if applicable): For business accounts, use the /apply/business_application endpoint.
   • Note: tin (Tax Identification Number) and incorporation_state fields are required for BYO KYB business applications.
3. Perform KYC/KYB Verification: Process identity verification through your third-party KYC provider.
4. Submit KYC/KYB Results: Transmit verification results to Treasury Prime via the /apply/kyc endpoint.
   • Note: The endpoint documentation displays provider-specific field names (such as alloy, middesk, etc.) for Treasury Prime’s direct integrations. As a BYO KYC user, focus on the generic provider, provider_full, and provider_result fields instead.
   • In your request, associate the person/business application with the object_id and specify the object_type (person or business).
   • For multi-person applications, such as multiple people tied to a business account, you’ll need to create separate requests for each KYC result per person application.
   • Set the provider_result field to one of these values:
     • ok - Verification passed, account will open automatically
     • error - Verification failed, account will not open
     • pending - Application requires manual review
   • While optional, we strongly recommend including both provider and provider_full fields to build transparency and trust with banking partners. Without these fields, banking partners will only see the final result without supporting context. Example Request:
   {
     "kyc_product_id": "akpt_1209bga8she7",
     "object_id": "apsn_01d5w6yaa6vu",
     "object_type": "person",
     "provider": "YourKYCProvider",
     "provider_full": {
       "session_id": "abc123",
       "risk_score": 85,
       "tags": ["verified", "low_risk"]
     },
     "provider_result": {
       "outcome": "ok"
     }
   }
   
   Example Response:
   {
     "apply_true": null,
     "created_at": "2019-12-11T20:34:11Z",
     "id": "akyc_11f7av5311234",
     "kyc_product_id": "akpt_1209bga8she7",
     "object_id": "apsn_01d5w6yaa6vu",
     "object_type": "person",
     "provider": "YourKYCProvider",
     "provider_full": {
       "session_id": "abc123",
       "risk_score": 85,
       "tags": ["verified", "low_risk"]
     },
     "provider_result": {
       "outcome": "ok"
     },
     "updated_at": "2019-12-11T20:34:11Z"
   }
   
   Note: the provider-specific fields (alloy, alloy_full, middesk, middesk_full) are set to null for BYO KYC submissions, while your data is stored in the generic provider, provider_full, and provider_result fields.
5. Create Account Application: Submit the account application using the /apply/account_application endpoint.
   • Use the BYO KYC-specific account_product_id provided by Treasury Prime for this request.

Compliance considerations

• Treasury Prime’s built-in KYC meets regulatory standards for fintechs.
• Third-party KYC providers must be approved by the banking partner.
• If using BYO KYC, fintechs must obtain permission from their provider to share KYC results with Treasury Prime.