Know Your Business (KYB) is the verification a distributor runs on a buyer before opening a trade account: confirming the legal entity exists, identifying its beneficial owners and checking that the business behind the order is real. For digital codes the check is standard practice, because a wholesale account with instant delivery of near-cash products is exactly what fraud and money-laundering schemes go looking for.
If you are the buyer, KYB feels like friction between you and your first order. It is worth understanding what the distributor is protecting against, because that tells you which answers unblock the process.
Why code sellers run KYB
A gift card code is a bearer instrument: whoever holds it can redeem it or sell it on, with no chargeback path once delivered. That makes bulk codes attractive for laundering (buy with dirty funds, resell for clean ones) and for monetising stolen payment credentials. Regulators and issuers both expect the trade channel to know who it sells to, and a distributor that skips the check risks its own upstream contracts.
There is a second, quieter reason. Distributors price and provision by customer type: a storefront ordering steadily is a different account from a rewards platform with seasonal spikes. KYB answers feed straight into the trade terms you get.
What you will be asked for
The core list is stable across the industry:
- Legal entity documents. Certificate of incorporation or registry extract, registered address, company number, sometimes recent filings.
- Beneficial owners (UBO). Who owns and controls the company at the end of the ownership chain, usually with identity documents for anyone above a threshold stake.
- Evidence of a real business. A live website or storefront, app listings, or for pre-launch buyers a credible description of the sales channel.
- Volumes and use case. What you plan to buy, roughly how much per month, and who the end customers are (retail buyers, employees, promotion recipients).
- Source of funds, in some cases: where the deposit money comes from, typically for larger opening balances or higher-risk jurisdictions.
None of this is exotic. It is the same shape of review a payment provider or bank runs, tuned for a product that behaves like cash.
How to get through it quickly
Have the documents ready before you apply: entity papers, UBO details and identity documents in one folder. Point to a real web presence, even a modest one; an application with no verifiable footprint goes to the slow queue. Give straight answers about your sales channel and volumes, and resist the urge to inflate the numbers, since a stated volume you never reach reads worse at review time than a small figure you outgrow.
Onboarding time varies more than most buyers expect. Legacy processes at large distributors can run for weeks, with document requests arriving one at a time. Newer providers compress the same checks into hours or a few days when the paperwork is clean and the business is easy to verify. Ask about the expected timeline up front and plan stock accordingly.
Remember the check runs both ways. While the distributor verifies you, you should be vetting the supplier with the same seriousness: registry lookups, provenance questions, a written replacement policy. A supplier that demands your UBO documents but will not name its own legal entity has answered a question you did not ask.
What happens after approval
Approval unlocks three things: trade terms (your discount tiers and any brand restrictions), a funding arrangement (prepaid deposit at first, sometimes a credit line once history builds), and catalogue access, whether through a portal, file feeds or an API. From there the practical work starts: a small first order, test redemptions and region checks, covered step by step in our bulk buying checklist.
Expect periodic re-checks. KYB is not a one-time gate; distributors refresh documents when ownership changes, when volumes jump, or on a fixed cycle. Keeping your folder current turns each refresh into an email rather than a stalled account.
Frequently asked questions
What is KYB onboarding?
KYB (Know Your Business) onboarding is the review a supplier performs before opening a wholesale account: verifying the legal entity, identifying beneficial owners and confirming the buyer runs a genuine business with a legitimate use for the product. For digital codes it exists because the product is near-cash and attractive to fraud, and because issuers require their channel to know its buyers.
What documents does a gift card distributor ask for?
The standard set: certificate of incorporation or a registry extract, proof of registered address, beneficial-owner details with identity documents, and evidence of your sales channel such as a live website or storefront. Some add a short questionnaire on expected volumes and end customers, and larger deposits can trigger a source-of-funds question. Clean copies of these, ready in one folder, remove most of the delay.
How long does supplier onboarding take?
Anywhere from a few hours to several weeks. The spread comes from the provider, not the buyer: legacy onboarding at large distributors moves through manual review queues, while newer providers verify clean applications in hours or days. Your side of the timeline is document readiness and a verifiable web presence; missing UBO details are the most common cause of a stalled application.
Why do distributors ask for beneficial owner (UBO) documents?
Because bulk codes are near-cash bearer instruments, distributors must know who controls the buying company, not just its registered name. Identifying the owners at the end of the ownership chain is how they screen out laundering fronts and protect their own upstream contracts with issuers. Having identity documents ready for anyone above a threshold stake removes one of the most common onboarding delays.
Can I buy codes in bulk without a registered company?
Usually not through a wholesale account: KYB starts with a legal entity, and without one there is nothing to verify. Sole traders and pre-launch businesses can still pass with some providers, if the registration exists and the sales channel is credible, even a modest one. If you are trading purely as an individual, expect retail or marketplace pricing until you incorporate.