KYB API guide: How to streamline verification with open banking

If you’ve clicked on this article, you’re probably experiencing at least one of the following problems with your KYB process:

The process is slow and inefficient. It’s draining your team’s resources and taking up time that could be spent on growing your business.
You’re concerned that your KYB measures are not solid enough. You’ve heard horror stories about the impact of FCA fines and the reputational damage that follows.
Because of this lack of confidence in your process, you’re losing out on higher-risk prospects. This is costing you new business opportunities and limiting your growth.

While not a complete KYB solution, one powerful tool that you ought to consider using is open banking.

In this article:

Need to KYB merchants and find the source of wealth of beneficial owners with minimal friction and direct access to bank statements? Yapily can connect with nearly 2000 banks across 19 countries. Contact us to learn more.

How open banking can help with KYB

Again, it’s important to emphasise that open banking is not a complete KYB solution. However, the features it offers — namely, data services — can transform how your team manages KYB.

Open banking involves connecting to bank APIs to provide instant and secure transfer of information to third-party financial service providers.

Open banking solutions streamline this process by aggregating and standardising access to these APIs, ensuring consistency and reliability across different banks.

These platforms typically offer data services that allow businesses to retrieve customer account data, such as balances, transactions, and identity details, with user consent.

(If the provider is also a Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP), like Yapily, you can also initiate payments through the same API integration)

Here’s how open banking data services help with KYB checks:

Data requires less friction to access and can be more accurate

Open banking data services give businesses direct access to accurate, real-time financial data from banks. By connecting through secure APIs, these solutions replace slow, manual processes and help teams make better decisions faster.

Relying on PDFs or scanned bank statements introduces unnecessary risk to your business. These documents are easy to manipulate, and with AI tools becoming more advanced and widely available, spotting a fake is getting harder. Manual processes are also vulnerable to human error, even for the most experienced compliance teams.

The same challenge applies to meeting Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements. Identity verification of business owners in high-risk areas—known as Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs)—is a key part of compliance, but it’s difficult to do without a reliable data source. Asking individuals to provide access to their financial information can introduce a lot of friction, sometimes to the point of the business arrangement stalling altogether

A reliable open banking solution can pull data from both individual and business accounts. This reduces fraud risk, supports AML compliance, and creates a smoother onboarding experience for your customers.

Monitor transactions continuously and flag unusual activities

KYB doesn’t end at onboarding. Ongoing monitoring is essential, but manually reviewing thousands of transactions to spot trends or suspicious activity isn’t viable as you scale. This is where open banking can add tremendous value to your operations.

Data access can continue for up to 90 days in the UK and up to 180 days in the EEA. While some banks only grant short-term access (as little as five minutes), users can reauthorise consent as needed.

To make monitoring these transactions easier, it’s worth choosing an open banking solution that supports transaction enrichment, such as providing merchant names and categorising transactions.

How open banking helps you comply with AML and KYB requirements in the EU and the UK

Let’s look at the specific ways in which open banking data services can support key AML/KYB requirements:

AML/KYB Requirement	How open banking supports compliance
Management Information	Open banking account and transaction data improves the quality of management reporting. Helps senior leadership assess customer risk and identify root causes of AML exposure across the portfolio.
Customer Risk Assessment	Real-time account and transaction data supports more accurate CDD, EDD, and ongoing monitoring. Enables risk-based onboarding decisions aligned with your firm’s acceptance criteria.
1. Carry out Customer Due Diligence (CDD)	Access real-time account data to verify identity and ownership without relying on PDFs. Supports automated verification of individuals, merchants, and UBOs.
2. Conduct Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD)	Enriched transaction insights and personal account access (with consent) help assess high-risk individuals like PEPs and complex ownership structures.
3. Monitor and report suspicious transactions	Identify anomalies such as frequent transactions below threshold, or activity linked to high-risk jurisdictions. Supports automated detection and generation of Suspicious Activity Reports.
4. Maintain secure and auditable records	Use ISO-certified platforms to store and transfer data securely. Helps maintain a full audit trail for AML reporting, regulatory compliance, and internal reviews.
5. Identify and verify Ultimate Beneficial Owners	Access business transaction data to support UBO identification. Helps confirm shareholder connections and ongoing activity linked to named individuals or entities.
6. Conduct ongoing monitoring	Refresh financial data throughout the consent window (90 days UK, 180 days EEA). Supports ongoing KYB and real-time risk scoring across an active customer base.
7. Automate risk scoring and categorisation	Use enriched and categorised transaction data to trigger EDD, flag adverse media, or detect anomalies across sources. Helps reduce manual workload and improve consistency.
8. Manage consent and audit trails	Record every consent event, API call, and data pull. Most providers offer RESTful APIs and detailed logs to support traceability and regulatory reporting.

*Sources: EU: Directive (EU) 2018/843 (5AMLD)¹, UK: Money Laundering Regulations 2017 (as amended)

Four questions to ask when choosing an open banking solution for KYB

Hopefully, you’re now clear on the benefits of open banking for KYB checks. But how do you choose the right provider for your business?

Here are four key questions to help you evaluate open banking solutions, specifically through the lens of KYB:

1. Does it cover the countries your business customers operate in?

KYB obligations often apply across multiple jurisdictions, especially if your customers operate internationally or plan to expand. That means you need an open banking provider with strong coverage in your core markets and any regions you’re likely to scale into.

But coverage isn’t just about quantity. Look at the quality and depth of business account integrations in each market. For KYB checks to work effectively, your provider must support reliable data access for both corporate and sole trader accounts—not just personal accounts.

2. Does the solution meet the security standards needed for regulatory compliance?

KYB checks involve sensitive financial data that must be handled with care. A basic level of security might be enough for simple consumer payments—but it won’t cut it when you’re dealing with financial records, UBO checks, or AML obligations.

Make sure the provider offers:

End-to-end encryption
ISO 27001 certification
Secure authentication flows
Robust consent management

But beyond keeping data secure, the system also needs to be reliable and auditable. You should be able to trace and access all verification activities through a clear digital audit trail. If a check is missed because the system is unreliable or data isn’t accessible at the right moment, it can expose you to regulatory risk, and potentially invalidate parts of your KYB process.

3. Can you tailor the experience to build trust and reduce onboarding friction?

KYB checks can introduce friction, especially if you’re asking for access to sensitive business financial data. A white-labelled experience helps reduce that friction by maintaining a consistent, trustworthy brand experience across every step of the flow.

Look for an open banking provider that offers:

Customisable hosted pages with your brand styling
APIs that allow full UX control if you’re building your own flow
Flexible consent screens tailored to different verification needs

This can make a major difference to conversion rates, particularly when onboarding higher-risk customers or verifying UBOs.

4. Do they offer domain expertise to support evolving KYB and AML regulations?

KYB isn’t static. Regulatory bodies in the UK and EU continue to evolve AML and CDD rules, and it’s not always easy to stay ahead.

Choose an open banking partner that:

Actively monitors regulatory changes
Provides proactive support for compliance use cases
Offers documentation and sandbox environments to test your flows
Has real-world experience working with AML-sensitive industries

If a provider can’t support you when new KYB requirements emerge, you’ll be left scrambling to adapt. That’s why strong domain knowledge and hands-on support should be non-negotiable.

Why use Yapily to improve your KYB process

Yapily is a leading open banking infrastructure platform that empowers businesses to access and leverage financial data seamlessly. By providing secure, real-time access to bank account information across Europe, Yapily enables companies to streamline Know Your Business (KYB) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance processes.

Here are three reasons to consider using Yapily to support your KYB checks:

1. Strong business account coverage across the EU and UK

Many open banking solutions have limited coverage for business accounts and focus more on consumer accounts. We ensure at Yapily and have highly tested business account integrations.

We can offer open banking data services across the EU and the UK. This means you will have access to nearly 2000 banks across 19 countries and only need to use one provider across your operations, making it simpler to scale.

While receiving raw data from the bank is helpful, it can be challenging to make sense of it. That’s why we created Data Plus. This enables you to:

Categorise transactions: Data Plus recognizes and labels transactions to help you analyse a business’ activities and accurately assess its risk profile.
Name merchants: It helps you to normalize incomplete or inconsistent merchant names from banks. This saves you from spending time figuring out cryptic codes or incomplete references.

Note: (Service availability may vary depending on factors such as local infrastructure and banking partnerships.)

2. White label your data services to build trust

Trust is critical during KYB. When you’re asking businesses to share sensitive financial data, the experience needs to be both secure and brand-consistent. Yapily gives you the flexibility to deliver a smooth onboarding journey—without delaying your launch.

You can choose the integration approach that works best for your team:

Direct Integration

Ideal if you want full control over the KYB flow and experience.

Build your own user interface on top of Yapily’s infrastructure
Design a custom onboarding journey that matches your existing product
Tailor functionality and layout to your exact compliance needs

Hosted Pages

Perfect if you want to launch quickly, without compromising on branding.

Out-of-the-box interface hosted by Yapily
Customise elements like logos, colours, and fonts to reflect your brand
Reduce development time while ensuring a seamless customer experience

Whichever option you choose, Yapily supports secure access to financial data across the UK and EU, helping you streamline business verification and stay compliant with AML and KYB requirements.

3. Yapily is both an AISP and a PISP

Some open banking providers only focus on data access (AISP) or payment initiation (PISP). Yapily does both. That means you can handle KYB workflows—like verifying identity, checking repayment ability, and setting up direct debits—through one provider.

For example, if you’re onboarding a business customer, Yapily lets you validate their identity, assess affordability, and enable open banking payments, all through a single integration. No need to juggle multiple providers or contracts.

By keeping data and payments under one roof, Yapily streamlines your KYB process and sets you up for smoother customer journeys and stronger regulatory alignment.

How Adyen is improving its onboarding experience with Yapily

Adyen is one of Europe’s largest fintech platforms that helps businesses transact across borders and accept multiple payment methods. It provides services to global brands like Spotify, McDonald’s, and Uber.

Adyen uses Yapily’s open banking data services to access merchants’ data from banks in the EU and the UK. This lets Adyen provide a fast, efficient, and secure account verification for merchants using its services.

It is also offering data products as a standalone solution to its customers. This allows Adyen’s customers—such as platforms and marketplaces—to access enriched financial data directly from bank accounts, helping them verify businesses, assess credit risk, and monitor ongoing activity.

By embedding Yapily’s data services into their own workflows, Adyen’s clients can build more efficient and compliant onboarding journeys of their own.

Smoothly onboard and KYB clients with Yapily’s open banking solution

Onboarding merchants can be a simple and comfortable experience for you and your clients with the right open banking solution.

With Yapily, your clients’ financial data is only a few clicks away, whether you operate in the UK or across Europe.

If you want to strengthen and simplify your onboarding with a pan-European open banking solution, contact us at Yapily to learn the next steps.

Sources

Payment-Produkte

Daten-Produkte

Tools & Services

Branchen

Für Entwickler

Unternehmen

Insights