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KYB API: How it works and how to pick the right solution for you

Harry Musson

Harry Musson

KYB Specialist

KYB API: How it works and how to pick the right solution for you

As your business expands into new countries, you're faced with two less-than-ideal options: integrate with a new set of KYB (Know Your Business) data providers for every region, or take on the heavy lift of connecting to local registries with varying database formats and decoding each jurisdiction’s regulatory landscape on your own.

But there’s a third, more efficient option: using a KYB platform which offers APIs into all major international registries, centralizing global verification data from a single vendor.

In this article, we’ll cover:

  • How does a KYB API platform work?
  • Why it makes sense to integrate with a KYB API platform – and how to pick the best one for your needs
  • How GBG helps verify businesses quickly and at scale

Ready to get started with KYB verification or improve your current business onboarding process? Learn more about GBG Detected, our KYB solution that we built based on more than 30 years of experience. Book a demo.

How does a KYB API platform work?

A KYB API platform brings together the core elements of business onboarding – business verification, UBO and director discovery, identity verification and screening, and ongoing monitoring – into a single, automated workflow.

Instead of relying on manual research or multiple third-party tools, you can plug into a network of all leading corporate data providers. When a verification request is made, the system uses a waterfall approach: it automatically queries the provider with the most complete and reliable data first. If additional details are needed, it then cascades to the next best provider until all required information is gathered.

The system then consolidates these results and returns a comprehensive, structured verification report in seconds.

Here is how it typically works:

  1. The user inputs the necessary information into the user flow (this can be performed either by your company or the onboarding end-user, such as your client or supplier).
  2. The system sends an API request to the data network with basic data, such as the company name, registration number and jurisdiction.
  3. The KYB API platform connects to third-party corporate data providers via APIs that search authoritative sources like official government registries, regulatory and risk databases, and ownership and corporate structure sources. Some KYB APIs enable lookups in real time, while others use pre-collected or cached datasets.
  4. Business identity and ownership verification is performed. This usually involves checking the company’s legal status, confirming that the registration details match official records, determining whether the business is a real company or a shell company, and completing Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) and director discovery.
  5. A risk score is calculated based on factors like the company’s industry and the region it’s located in, as well as ownership complexity and any previous compliance issues. Checks for sanctions, PEPs, adverse media and other risk factors are also performed.
  6. The API returns structured data to your system. Using the information, you can decide how to move forward: for example, auto-approve legitimate businesses, flag suspicious cases for manual review, request additional documents for authentication of business owners or block fraud attempts.

Why it makes sense to integrate with a KYB API platform – and how to pick the best one for your needs

If you try to perform KYB verification at scale without an end-to-end onboarding platform supported by a robust API network, you’re forced to manually search for information via open source or connect to local data vendors and manage multiple technical integrations. This complicates your operations and adds friction as you try to enter new markets.

A dedicated KYB platform enriched with API data from registries, on the other hand, gives you real-time access to global authoritative data and normalizes it into a consistent format.

Crucially, a data API alone isn’t enough for effective KYB. After all, information in some countries or industries can be sparse – without an easy means to conduct workflow management, automate checks and approval, and seamlessly request additional information from the customer, you might have to fall back on manual processes.

A robust KYB API platform should automate these time-consuming and labor-intensive manual tasks, enabling you to onboard new business customers faster, reduce drop-off rates, and free up resources, which can ultimately increase your return on investment.

But not all KYB API platforms are the same – there are subtle, yet impactful, differences between each, from the breadth of data coverage to integration difficulty.

When choosing a KYB API solution, look for one that enables you to:

1. Access broad and deep business dataset coverage in the countries you want to operate in

Extensive access to company registries, UBO databases and watchlists across jurisdictions allows you to verify everything from legal status to ownership structures accurately, no matter where a business is registered.

But connectivity to the right sources is equally important – and sometimes difficult to achieve due to variability across regions. In the US, for example, there isn’t a single national database because business registration and ownership information is handled at the state level. This means your KYB provider needs to be able to aggregate data from fragmented state registries.

What’s more, a platform that scales with you across borders and supports a frictionless KYB onboarding experience should accommodate multiple languages, process region-specific data formats, and handle high-volume verification requests in real time. Your team should also be able to easily configure checks to align with regulatory frameworks like the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) directives or the US’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requirements.

You’ll also want to ensure the API is reliable and features high-uptime Service Level Agreements (SLAs), predictable response times, and built-in redundancy to support 24/7 onboarding across time zones. Furthermore, rate limiting and throttling should be in place for all APIs to protect against traffic spikes, with support by a Content Delivery Network to provide additional protection.

2. Integrate the solution seamlessly into your CRM or CLM system

An effective KYB API platform should offer APIs that plug directly into your existing infrastructure without forcing long development cycles or major changes to how your teams operate. The result is the ability to launch faster, reduce operational overhead, and scale customer onboarding efficiently.

When evaluating options, look for:

  • APIs that enable real-time data flows with minimal engineering effort
  • Features for automated document reading that enable data extraction from uploaded documents and authenticate the document using fraud/tampering detection
  • Pre-built connectors for your existing operational systems, such as a CRM
  • Configurable workflows that allow you to customize aspects like risk rules to fit your risk appetite across jurisdictions
  • Responsive technical support to help accelerate implementation and deployment
  • API security, such as 256-bit encryption both in transit and at rest, with daily automated scans
  • Resilience and the ability to auto-scale depending on the required load

3. Automate critical KYB components via a single API call

The right KYB API platform ought to automate time-consuming manual processes, such as business data collection, sanctions and PEPs screening, or risk scoring.

But automating individual KYB elements isn’t all you can do: dynamically routing customers between those KYB modules based on factors like risk level and jurisdiction takes onboarding efficiency even further.

Dynamic routing automatically determines which onboarding flow customers need to go through based on attributes like country of incorporation, ownership complexity, and entity type. By approving low-risk companies and flagging high-risk entities for manual review, the lower-risk companies are able to move through the onboarding process quicker, which reduces the chances of drop-offs and allows your teams to focus on more complex cases.

Onboarding isn’t where KYB ends, however. The best KYB solutions also perform ongoing monitoring for changes in compliance risk by automatically refreshing connections between your stored KYB data and global registries over time.

With all these components automated through a single platform, you can significantly save resources and speed up your operations.

Why use GBG’s KYB platform to verify businesses quickly and at scale

We’re a leading global identity technology company with more than 30 years of experience in the identity verification industry, and we support 20,000 customers in 90 countries.

Our end-to-end KYB product, GBG Detected, helps automate and accelerate the business verification process through a single KYB API platform so you can acquire new customers in days, not weeks.

With our solution, you get to verify businesses against company data and ID documents from 195 countries, automate processes like director and UBO discovery and risk assessment, and create a quicker, smoother customer onboarding journey to improve match rates.

Here are a few reasons companies choose to work with us:

1. Replace a patchwork of KYB processes with a single solution

Fragmentation is one of the biggest operational challenges in KYB: different countries come with different data sources, disconnected systems are used for separate parts of the verification process (one for business registry checks, another for screening), and teams often have to manually transfer data between silos, increasing both time and the chance of compliance gaps.

Our GBG Detected solution eliminates this complexity by bringing every stage of KYB into one unified platform.

With our KYB product, you get:

  • A single integration that plugs into multiple data sources, such as official government registries, sanctions watchlists and commercial databases
  • All the necessary KYB components, such as business verification, director and UBO discovery, and identity verification and screening, within the same platform
  • Continuous monitoring after onboarding to ensure compliance as regulations and business structures change over time
  • A unified audit trail and reporting environment, which saves time that would otherwise be spent compiling data from multiple spreadsheets and systems

Here’s how it works:

2. Expand across borders with comprehensive and accurate data through an end-to-end KYB solution

As you scale into new markets, you may find it difficult to access all the data you need to verify and onboard customers compliantly. Working with a single KYB provider that already has the necessary infrastructure and data partnerships in place makes this a non-issue.

With a vast global dataset that includes more than 600 million company records and more than 200 beneficial ownership registries, we provide you with access to all the datasets you need to complete KYB at scale, no matter where you’re doing business.

With our solution, you don’t have to piece together KYB data from multiple local registries, build custom integrations for each jurisdiction or rely on manual research for foreign entities.

Instead, you get a single, unified KYB product that delivers broad coverage across the globe and reliable, normalized data regardless of origin.

3. Speed up onboarding and preserve resources with automated workflows

Traditional KYB verification that requires teams to navigate multiple registries, collect documents from customers, and manually validate corporate ownership information creates operational bottlenecks and increases drop-offs during onboarding.

The solution is to integrate with a KYB solution that performs these tasks almost instantly, turning an hours- or days-long process into one that can be completed in minutes.

Our product does exactly that. It also allows you to configure branded workflows that you can customize based on critical onboarding criteria, such as jurisdiction, sector, or risk level: low-risk customers can be approved automatically, while higher-risk companies may trigger enhanced due diligence that can include uploading additional documents or manual review by a compliance officer.

You can customize routing based on other attributes too, such as the company type. For example, if the company is an LLC, you’ll need its Employer Identification Number (EIN) and state registration number. If it’s a sole proprietorship, it’ll be routed past the state registration lookup step, and a personal Know Your Customer (KYC) check can be run instead.

What’s more, the portal is user-friendly with a sleek interface, enabling customers to upload documents easily and get verified quickly.

How Weatherbys automated and sped up its onboarding process with GBG Detected

Manual processes were slowing down growth at Weatherbys, a private banking and horse racing conglomerate established in 1770.

While the company was already enjoying 80%+ pass rates with our KYC solution, it was searching for a KYB product that could replace its manual onboarding processes for its complex, multi-owner racing clients.

After getting set up with GBG Detected, Weatherbys implemented an automated onboarding process capable of handling complicated multi-owner businesses. The new onboarding workflow allowed Weatherbys to put robust controls in place to help manage risk, support regulatory compliance and save time and resources.

Read the full case study: Weatherbys Bank transforms onboarding with GBG Detected

Speed up KYB processes at scale with GBG Detected

By consolidating fragmented data sources, standardizing verification logic across jurisdictions and automating the high-friction components of KYB, a unified KYB API platform enables teams to replace resource-heavy manual processes with a dynamic, unified workflow.

The result is not only faster onboarding, but cleaner data, stronger risk controls, and the operational efficiency required to expand into new markets without significantly increasing compliance overhead.

Learn how we can help you simplify KYB operations: Request a demo today.

FAQs: KYB API

A KYB API platform solves problems such as onboarding friction, data fragmentation across markets, multiple vendors or systems slowing down operations and complex compliance requirements.

It solves these problems by centralizing access to data and eliminating the need for multiple integrations. With a unified KYB solution like GBG Detected, you’re able to work in one system that handles everything instead of multiple systems for different tasks. 

There is no longer a need to have sensitive documents saved to hard drives, important onboarding data sitting in inboxes, or to play endless email tennis with the customer. Everything you need to onboard a business is stored within GBG Detected.

Most KYB APIs provide:

  • Registered business information
  • Corporate status and entity type
  • Director and shareholder details
  • UBO structures
  • Sanctions and PEP screenings
  • Monitoring updates

Accuracy depends on the API’s data sources. APIs that rely on aggregated global registries with authoritative sources, such as official government records, verified regulatory databases and corporate filings, typically provide the most accurate data.

In contrast, APIs that rely heavily on secondary or aggregated datasets may provide outdated or incomplete information, especially in jurisdictions where business data changes frequently.

The more direct, real-time and jurisdiction-specific the source is, the higher the accuracy of the KYB output.