Know Your Business (KYB) – modern verification for regulated industries
Know Your Business (KYB) – what it is, why it matters, and how to modernize compliance
Know Your Business (KYB) is now a core requirement for regulated industries. Banks, fintechs, payment providers, corporate marketplaces, and B2B platforms must verify the legitimacy of any business they serve — who owns it, who controls it, and whether it poses financial-crime, sanctions, or reputational risks.
What KYB verifies in practice
KYB focuses on identifying the business entity and evaluating whether it is legitimate, trustworthy, and compliant.
Key verification steps include:
- Legal registration, incorporation documents, and licensing
- Confirmation of Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs)
- Shareholding structures and control relationships
- Screening against sanctions, blacklists, PEP lists, and adverse media
- Verification of trading status, operational history, and financial standing
- Cross-checking across corporate registries and global data sources
Competitor pages overlook a fundamental point: KYB is no longer just a static onboarding requirement. Regulators now expect ongoing monitoring, automated updates, and proof that institutions maintain a risk-based, continuously verified business identity program.
Why KYB matters more than ever
The rise of shell companies, cross-border fraud, and volatile supply chains means institutions must understand who they are doing business with — not just at onboarding, but throughout the relationship.
Key regulatory drivers include:
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EU AML Package and AMLD6, which expand liability for onboarding failures
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FATF Recommendations on UBO transparency
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DORA, which requires due diligence on ICT third-party providers
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FinCEN CDD Rule and updated beneficial ownership requirements
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EBA guidelines on financial-crime risk management
Failing KYB exposes organisations to:
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Large regulatory fines
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Fraud and sanctions violations
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Reputational damage
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Loss of banking access or market approval
The problem: KYB data is fragmented, inconsistent, and hard to trust
Traditional KYB relies on PDFs, emails, proprietary portals, and manual document uploads. These systems fail for three reasons:
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No interoperability — each registry and platform has a different schema
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No real-time updates — data becomes outdated quickly
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Too much sensitive data sharing — increases risk and GDPR exposure
This has pushed regulators and industry groups toward verifiable credentials, digital wallets, and privacy-preserving verification models.
The future of KYB: verifiable business credentials
Forward-looking firms are moving from document collection to cryptographically verified business identities, where:
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Corporate data comes directly from authoritative sources
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UBO and company information is issued as verifiable credentials
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Relying parties can verify authenticity instantly
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Sensitive data is not shared, only mathematically proven
This approach reduces fraud, speeds up onboarding, and ensures regulatory alignment.
Are your business at risk of failing the FCA
FCA’s blockchain-enabled data strategy aims to save up to £4 billion in annual compliance costs source. Implementing Partisia’s MPC framework reduces duplication in cross-bank fraud checks.
What's inside?
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Competitors & why Partisia prevails
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Why Partisia exceeds industry alternatives
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ROI & value proposition
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Next step
and more...
How decentralized identity improves KYB
Decentralized identity frameworks (such as those advancing across Europe) address the structural problems in KYB:
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Businesses hold their own verified credentials
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Service providers verify claims without handling raw data
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Updates propagate automatically when authoritative sources change
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Multi-jurisdiction onboarding becomes consistent and traceable
See related pages on Decentralized Identities:
How Partisia’s decentralized identity will transform IAM, IDV & KYC providers for better security & compliance
Cross-Border KYC: A new path to secure data sharing
Perpetual KYC (pKYC) – real-time compliance for the modern financial institution
The connection between KYB and the European Business Wallet (EUBW)
The European Business Wallet (EUBW) — part of the EU Digital Identity framework — will allow companies to store and present:
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Business registration data
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Licenses and permits
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Authorised signatory credentials
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UBO declarations
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ESG and supply-chain attestations
For KYB, this means that verification workflows will be:
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Faster
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More secure
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Fully interoperable across EU borders
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Based on trusted, machine-verifiable credentials
Partisia explains this transformation in detail - How EUBW connects business identity with digital passport
How Partisia enhances KYB through privacy-preserving computation
Partisia provides the cryptographic backbone required for privacy-preserving KYB, enabling institutions to verify sensitive business data without seeing or storing it.
Key capabilities include:
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Multi-Party Computation (MPC) for verifying attributes securely
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Zero-Knowledge Proofs for proving ownership and authorisation
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Confidential Computing for regulated cross-border data use
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Secure UBO verification without exposing underlying shareholder details
These capabilities allow KYB checks to become:
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Real-time
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GDPR-compliant
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Audit-ready
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Resistant to data breaches
This positions Partisia as a critical technology partner for the future of corporate identity verification.
“The future of KYB will not depend on collecting more data. It will rely on verifying the right data without exposing it. Privacy-preserving verification is what finally allows accuracy, compliance, and speed to coexist.”
— Mark Medum Bundgaard, Chief Product Officer, Partisia
What companies must do now
To prepare for the new KYB era, businesses and service providers should:
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Map out existing onboarding flows and identify manual pain points
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Begin integrating verifiable credentials into KYB systems
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Implement privacy-preserving checks for UBO and sanctions screening
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Prepare for EUBW and other EU digital identity frameworks
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Adopt real-time KYB monitoring rather than one-off checks
KYB is moving from paperwork to cryptographic proof — and early adopters will reduce risk while improving customer experience.
Summary
KYB is becoming a cornerstone of financial and supply-chain trust. Legacy document-based workflows cannot meet modern regulatory standards or fraud risks. Verifiable business credentials, decentralized identity, and privacy-preserving computation offer a path forward — and Partisia’s platform is at the center of that evolution.
