What is KYB? A Guide for African Fintechs

KYC (Know Your Customer) verifies an individual's identity — their name, ID document, and address. KYB (Know Your Business) verifies a legal entity — its registration, status, and ownership. KYB typically includes KYC, because verifying a business means also verifying the directors and beneficial owners behind it.

A complete KYB check confirms the company's registration (RC/BN number), legal name, entity type, status, and incorporation date; its tax identity (TIN) where available; its directors and ultimate beneficial owners; sanctions and PEP screening on the entity and key people; and a verifiable registered address.

In practice, yes. Fintechs that onboard business customers, lend to companies, or settle payments to corporate accounts fall under AML/CFT obligations enforced by regulators such as the CBN in Nigeria. Verifying business customers and their beneficial owners is a core part of meeting those obligations.

A beneficial owner, or ultimate beneficial owner (UBO), is the natural person who ultimately owns or controls a company — typically anyone holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights, or who otherwise exercises control. Identifying UBOs is central to KYB because it reveals who is really behind the entity, beyond the names on the certificate.

In Nigeria, KYB starts with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC): confirm the company's RC or BN number, legal name, status, and type, then verify its TIN and, for higher-risk cases, its directors and beneficial owners. You can do this manually through the registry or automatically via an API that pulls live CAC data with provenance and a last-verified date.

Yes. A business verification API lets you submit a company name or registration number and receive a structured, sourced result — legal name, status, RC number, TIN, and ownership data — in seconds. Endpoints for search, company lookup, verify, and bulk-verify let you run KYB in real time at onboarding, in batch across your book, or on a recurring schedule.