KYC — Know Your Customer
What is KYC?
KYC (Know Your Customer) is the mandatory identity verification a carrier or regulator applies before it activates a phone number, approves a Sender ID, or expands a sender's throughput in a regulated market. The requesting business supplies a document bundle — a verified legal identity, a tax or company registry entry, beneficial-owner structure, and proof of operating address — and continually renews it as documents age out, because many jurisdictions block traffic for entities whose KYC no longer matches the current record.
More detail
KYC on Orbit is modeled as two tenant-owned assets: a document library (the files themselves) and a compliance profile (the structured business identity the files back up). A business uploads a bundle once, references each document by `doc_…` ID across compliance profiles and Sender-ID registrations, and renews them periodically — a number or sender activated against expired documents falls into a pending-gated surface until renewal clears it.
Every regulator and carrier in a market applies its own KYC standard (some require a company registry extract, some require a lease or utility bill, and some require both), but the pattern is universal: a number blocked for missing or aged documents cannot be re-approved without supplying the documents themselves, and the renewal window matters more than the original submission.
Frequently asked
- What documents do carriers ask for in a typical KYC bundle?
- The exact list varies by regulator, but the common request is a verified legal name, a company registry or tax registration, a beneficial-owner declaration, and operating-address proof (a lease, a bank statement, or a utility bill). Orbit's compliance profiles capture all four and queue the renewal alarms.
- Does uploading the documents complete my KYC?
- Uploading is the tenant's side of the lifecycle; the carrier or regulator in each market still reviews and approves the bundle. Orbit stores the documents, carries them to the carrier, and renews them on schedule — the approval itself stays with the market's authority, and a failed or pending check is a pending-gated surface, not a completed KYC.
- Why do entities with expired KYC documents lose traffic?
- Most regulated markets treat expired or aged documents as the same compliance failure as missing ones: the regulator's trust score for the sender drops, a number or Sender ID transitions into a pending-gated blocked state, and only a current, renewed bundle restores the activation. Orbit's renewal alarms surface the slide before it costs traffic.
See also
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