Trader KYBC (Know Your Business Customer) program

Description

KYBC (Know Your Business Customer) for online marketplaces is the EU Digital Services Act's headline due-diligence obligation on platforms that allow consumers to contract with third-party traders. Article 30 prescribes the minimum dataset the platform has to collect and verify before allowing a trader to use the service: name, address, contact details, identification document or trade-register entry, payment account details, and (where applicable) the economic-operator name and contact for products covered by the EU's product-safety regimes. The verification has to use reliable and independent sources, has to be retained for the duration of the contractual relationship plus six months, and has to be re-verified periodically. The operational pieces are the onboarding flow that gates trader-side functionality on completed KYBC, the verification engine and its tolerance for partial or transliterated information, the storage and retention surface that makes the data available to authorities on request, and the periodic-refresh process that catches stale data. The structurally interesting piece is the consumer-facing consequence; the DSA also requires the trader information to be presented to consumers at the point of purchase, which means KYBC failures surface in the storefront rather than only on the back end. Most platforms initially under-budget the periodic-refresh side, which is what enforcement has been catching.

Applicability

Applies when: business model role is intermediary or mixed.

How predicates are evaluated

Required by (4 regulations)

• DSA

  Articles 30-32 — trader-traceability obligations for online platforms allowing distance contracts.

  Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Digital Services Act)

• Omnibus

  Trader vs non-trader disclosure obligations.

  Directive (EU) 2019/2161

• DAC7

  Annex V Section IV(A)(4) — appropriate measures (final notice + account closure or payment withhold) against sellers who fail to provide due-diligence data after two reminders.

  Council Directive (EU) 2021/514

• EU GPSR

  Article 22(7) — capture trader name, registered trade name or trade mark, contact details, address of establishment, manufacturer name and address before consumers are bound by a distance contract.

  Regulation (EU) 2023/988

Fulfilled by (5)

• yoti · full · medium effort · $$
• veriff · full · medium effort · $$
• jumio · partial · high effort · $$$
• persona · full · medium effort · $$
• In-house build · high effort

ClearLaunch does not accept payment from vendors. Methodology.

Evidence formats

• KYC documentation
• trader registration records
• verification audit logs
• periodic re-verification cadence