Individual KYC Overview

Introduction

KYC (Know Your Customer) is a legal identity verification process required before any customer can send or receive funds through SpherePay. It is mandated by anti-money laundering (AML) regulations and must be completed once per customer.

SpherePay requires the following information to verify a customer's identity:

Category

Field	Source	Notes
Email address	API	`email` field in the customer creation request
Phone number	API	`phone` field in the customer creation request
Country of residence	API	`address.country` field in the customer creation request
Residential address (street, city, postal code, state)	API	`address` object in the customer creation request
Tax identification number	API	`personalInformation.taxIdentificationNumber` field in the customer creation request — accepted types vary by country, see Tax ID Numbers by Country
First name & last name	ID Document	Auto-extracted from the uploaded government-issued ID document
Date of birth	ID Document	Auto-extracted from the uploaded government-issued ID document
Government-issued ID document	ID Document	Uploaded via the document upload endpoint — see Document Guideline for accepted formats
Proof of address	ID Document	Uploaded via the document upload endpoint — see Document Guideline for accepted formats
Occupation	Manual	Collected directly from the customer when enhanced due diligence is required
Employment status	Manual	Collected directly from the customer when enhanced due diligence is required
Source of funds	Manual	Collected directly from the customer when enhanced due diligence is required
Primary purpose of account	Manual	Collected directly from the customer when enhanced due diligence is required
Expected monthly transaction amounts	Manual	Collected directly from the customer when enhanced due diligence is required
Intermediary status	Manual	Collected directly from the customer when enhanced due diligence is required

Additional documentation may be required

In certain circumstances, SpherePay may request additional information beyond the standard fields listed above. This typically applies to politically exposed persons (PEPs), elderly customers, high-risk profiles, or customers with unusually high expected transaction volumes. When triggered, the Manual fields above (such as source of funds and occupation) will be collected directly from the customer by SpherePay.

KYC Flowchart

To better understand how the KYC process works, please refer to the flowchart below.

User / Customer Merchant / Integrator SpherePay

Choose an onboarding method

SpherePay offers two methods for onboarding individual customers. You can choose to onboard the customer via API or via link.

Disclaimer

You must pick either API-based onboarding or link-based onboarding for each customer. Mixing the two for the same customer, or falling back to one if the other fails, is not supported and will result in an unsuccessful onboarding.

KYC via API (full control)

Use this when you want to manage onboarding UX inside your own product and have full control over the onboarding process.

KYC via Link (hosted)

Use this when you want the fastest integration with SpherePay's hosted onboarding experience.

Supporting Guidelines

On the process of onboarding an individual customer, SpherePay requires the customer's Tax Identification Number and Identification Document. To provide insight into which identification number type is accepted by SpherePay, please refer to the Tax ID Numbers by Country guide. For the complete list of acceptable identification documents to be uploaded for verification, please refer to the Document Guideline.

Readiness Checklist

A customer is ready to transfer when at least one verification profile in the Get Customer response reaches status: "approved". Different verification profiles unlock different transfer capabilities — see the Verification Profile reference for a full breakdown of what each profile requires.