Individual Customer's KYC Overview
Requirements and steps to onboard an individual customer so they can transfer.
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.
Requirements vary by onboarding model
Which compliance steps your integration must perform depends on your onboarding model. The table below is filterable by model. See the Onboarding Guide for a full comparison and prerequisites.
SpherePay requires the following information to verify a customer's identity:
| 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 |
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, SpherePay will contact you directly to clarify what is needed.
KYC Flowchart
The only step that differs between models is TOS Acceptance, which is required in Sphere-Managed and handled upstream in Platform-Managed. All other steps are shared.
Choose an onboarding method
SpherePay supports two integration approaches for individual KYC. The API path has separate guides for each onboarding model.
Disclaimer
You must pick a single integration method and onboarding model for each customer. Mixing methods for the same customer, or falling back to one if the other fails, is not supported and will result in an unsuccessful onboarding.
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.
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