Top 10 KYC Software & Tools for 2024

KYC verification is at the heart of the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) process, ensuring that customers are who they claim to be and can be trusted. While it’s a critical tool for combating financial crimes like money laundering and terrorism financing, the process can be lengthy, expensive, and frustrating for customers—making the right software choice more important than ever.

By cross-checking personally identifiable information (PII) against official documents like passports, KYC verification enables compliance and security. It involves essential steps like customer identification, due diligence, and ongoing monitoring. With so many solutions available, finding the right KYC software can streamline this process and save businesses significant time and cost.

What Is KYC Software?

KYC software helps companies comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations by verifying customer identities as part of the Customer Due Diligence (CDD) process. It automates the collection and validation of personally identifiable information (PII), such as names, addresses, and ID documents, ensuring customers are who they claim to be.

This software plays a critical role in preventing financial crimes like money laundering and terrorism financing by screening and monitoring customer data. By streamlining compliance and mitigating risks, KYC software ensures a safer and more secure environment for businesses and their customers.

Top Features of KYC Software

Before choosing KYC software, consider the following features:

Comprehensive digital footprint analysis: Enables deeper insights into users by analyzing email, phone, IP data, and online behavior. This feature helps verify digital identities, detect fraudsters earlier, and streamline onboarding without relying on official documents.
Document verification: Verifies whether an ID is valid, fake, or stolen. Different solutions leverage various data sources and methods to ensure accurate validation.
Integrated AML compliance: Automates AML screening by checking against PEPs, sanctions, and crime lists. This feature monitors transactions in real time, blocks suspicious users early, and ensures compliance across products and regions.

Best KYC Software & Tools

SEON empowers businesses to detect fraud early by leveraging advanced digital footprint analysis. While not a full KYC solution, SEON effectively filters out fraudulent users during the onboarding process, reducing the need for costly and time-consuming KYC checks.

By identifying and blocking bad actors before they reach critical verification steps, SEON helps organizations save resources while enhancing overall fraud prevention. This proactive approach not only minimizes wasted effort on manual reviews but also strengthens your defense against increasingly sophisticated threats.

Here’s a summary:

Pre-KYC Fraud Prevention: Analyze email, phone, and IP data to detect fraudulent users before costly KYC checks.
Real-Time User Verification: Use behavioral data, device intelligence, and online presence to instantly validate genuine users.
Comprehensive Fraud Detection: Monitor geolocation, IP behavior, and device signals to identify bots, linked accounts, and ATO attempts.
Cost-Efficient Automation: Reduce manual reviews with AI-powered decision-making and custom rules tailored to your business needs.

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SEON’s Digital Footprint

What do companies such as Revolut, Remitly, and Bitstamp have in common? They all verify identities with Onfido. The company leverages its AI models to verify 2,500 kinds of ID documents in 195 countries.

With Onfido, you’ll get liveness verification, biometrics analysis, and, of course, an AI system that will automatically accept or reject applications – with the added bonus of manual review for cases that fall within a grey area. Last but not least, Onfido is suitable for both KYC and AML checks thanks to its PEP screening and transaction monitoring features.

Trulioo (pronounced truly-you) offers ID document verification by scanning its huge list of five billion identities in 195 countries. The company provides access to 11,800 types of documents, from driving licenses to residency permits. It’s ideal to meet KYC requirements and to check AML watchlists.

All of Trulioo’s products, which also include business verification, are available via API integration. You can try the solution for free, then move up to the Growth plan (for KYC and AML checks only). The Enterprise plan includes business verification too.

According to Crunchbase, Refinitiv offers financial market data and infrastructure, supporting more than 40,000 institutions across over 190 countries. It delivers insights, trading solutions, and open technology platforms that foster a connected global financial community, enhancing performance in areas such as trading, investment, wealth management, compliance, risk management, and combating financial crime.

According to Crunchbase, KYC-Chain is an innovative platform using Distributed Ledger technology to streamline secure digital identity management. It simplifies customer onboarding for businesses, ensures regulatory compliance, and empowers users to retain ownership of their data, offering a seamless and efficient KYC process.

What do you do if you’re the victim of an online scam? Complain to the police? Boost your online security?

For Darrin Edelman, the answer was to build a better KYC tool. This was exactly how Token of Trust was born in 2015. The Minnesota-based company now offers electronic ID verification as well as document scanning and age verification. The latter is particularly useful for companies in the adult or iGaming industry.

If you need video ID verification and facial biometrics, Ondato should be on your radar. The Lithuanian company hopes that its KYC software is so frictionless that it will be close to enjoyable for your customers.

It certainly seems to have its fans, as companies such as General Financing, Swedbank, and NFT Venture rely on its technology for both KYC and AML.

Actico, which offers full digital transformation and decision automation products for some of the world’s leading financial institutions, also offers a complete compliance suite. It is designed specifically for AML, KYC, sanction list and PEP screening, and transaction screening. It also provides trade surveillance and even plays nicely with the renowned Avaloq Core banking system.

Companies currently relying on Actico include Santander, Volkswagen Financial Services, and ING, among others, and there is a definite focus on traditional banking rather than, say, neobanks or challenger banks.

iComply, also known as iComplyKYC, clearly states that it offers all the tools you need for identity validation. What are these tools exactly? Well, for starters, you have document verification, identity proofing, and identity verification using biometric authentication. There are also KYB tools to help your compliance even further.

If you also need anti-money laundering tools, the company has got you covered with watchlists, PEP, and adverse media checks – all available via modules that you can enable or disable depending on your current regulatory needs.

What Technologies Does KYC Software Use?

Since there are no set rules for performing a KYC check, a number of technologies may be employed and often combined as part of a multi-layered approach.

Real-time Video and Liveness Verification

Real-time ID checks are usually provided by a third-party company. You integrate the software into your system, and it allows customers to upload official documents to the site. Supported ID documents may include passports, driving licenses, or residency permits.

Biometrics

Another growing area of identity verification for KYC is the use of biometric technology. It includes physical measurements that are unique to each individual, such as a face ID, voice recognition, or fingerprint identification. In KYC, biometrics are often used at the authentication stage to ensure the person performing the action is the right one. There is an overlap with liveness identification and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Blockchain

While blockchain technology is commonly associated with cryptocurrencies, there has been a recent push to leverage it to store and share KYC identifiers anonymously. The idea is to capture user ID data, verify it once, and turn it into immutable data points that are accessible without revealing personal information – with enough confidence in their accuracy to pass a KYC check.

Digital Footprint Analysis

Sometimes a key part of a KYC check is simply proving that the person exists. With digital footprint analysis, the idea is to rely on a user’s behavior, social media presence, and online history to confirm that they are real. You can also get a better idea of who you’re dealing with by checking the tools they use. An email address or phone number, for instance, can reveal a lot of information about someone. The same can be true of the devices they rely on to connect to your site. You may not be able to confirm their IDs, but you can certainly flag suspicious behavior to learn if the person in question is a criminal or not.

AI and Machine Learning

While the terms artificial intelligence and machine learning may seem daunting, there’s another word you can use to describe the technology: automation. In short, it’s about using automated systems to accelerate verification to work with a higher volume of applications, whether it’s for image quality checks, document digitization, or suggesting risk rules. The key point is that you can’t outsource KYC to machines; the algorithms are simply a way to help with existing processes.

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Choosing the Best KYC Software

With an increasing number of options for KYC verification, it’s useful to understand how KYC software works and which solutions make sense for your business.

Hopefully, this article will be a good primer on the topic, whether you need to perform KYC checks via data enrichment or ID document verification.

FAQs

Why do you need to invest in KYC software?

KYC software is one of the most convenient solutions for automating Know Your Customer checks. These are legal requirements in a growing number of industries, including finance, iGaming, and crypto exchanges. KYC software can help you avoid compliance fines and accelerate customer verification to onboard more new customers without spending additional resources.

What does KYC stand for?

KYC stands for Know Your Customer. It is a set of guidelines that come from local regulators to ensure businesses know who they are dealing with.

What do you need for KYC?

The minimum requirements include knowing the customer’s full name, address, and date of birth. It usually involves checking an ID document such as a driver’s license, passport, or residency certificate.