A Guide to Video KYC for Banks

Digital onboarding breaks down when banks are unable to produce defensible identity evidence during audits, regulatory reviews, and cross-border expansion. Banks expanding into new markets face rising onboarding abandonment, inconsistent identity assurance, and regulatory scrutiny over whether remote verification genuinely matches in-person checks. Document-only eKYC models struggle to provide defensible evidence when higher identity risk or supervisory review is involved, forcing banks to reassess how remote onboarding should be performed.

As a result, online Bank Video KYC has become a core component of digital onboarding strategies for many global banks, often complementing traditional KYC workflows.

However, not all identity verification solutions support attended Video KYC, leaving banks dependent on document-only checks that fall short when higher assurance or audit evidence is required.

How Modern Banks Use Video KYC to Complete End-to-End Online Account KYC Across Borders?

For banks that lack an in-house attended verification facility, Video KYC Solution enables identity assurance equivalent to in-person checks through a controlled live session conducted by trained bank or third-party reviewers.

Many banks do not maintain in-house resources to conduct attended identity verification at scale, particularly across multiple jurisdictions. Banks use video KYC to complete remote onboarding through a single, controlled onboarding flow. For both retail and corporate consumers, the process is created to identify identity, authenticate documents, and verify that a user is present without visiting a branch or making manual follow-ups.

The typical video KYC journey includes:

• • Explicit customer consent to initiate identity verification and data processing
  • Attended a live session between the customer and an expert from the bank/ third-party provider
  • Integrated verification, ensuring document authenticity and user presence are validated together

• Recording and logging the video session and captured evidence, is retained for regulatory audit.

Through consolidation, video KYC reduces reliance on in-person verification while still meeting address and identity verification requirements where mandated.

Banks apply this model across multiple product lines, including:

• Remote account opening for individuals and businesses
• Digital lending and credit issuance, where faster identity verification accelerates approval timelines
• Wallets, cards, and cross-border financial services, where geographic reach is essential

Using Video KYC for Corporate and KYB Onboarding

Corporate onboarding introduces additional complexity beyond individual identity checks. Banks must verify directors, authorized signatories, and beneficial owners who may be located across different jurisdictions. VKYC enables banks to conduct attended verification sessions for key individuals, reducing delays caused by document back-and-forth while maintaining clear audit trails. This approach is particularly effective for cross-border business onboarding, where in-person verification is impractical.

Why Video KYC Goes Beyond Document-Only eKYC?

Traditional eKYC relies heavily on static document capture and automated checks. While effective for low-risk onboarding, it offers limited assurance against impersonation, synthetic identities, or coerced account creation. Video KYC introduces real-time human interaction, enabling banks to verify physical presence, observe behavioral cues, and validate documents in a single attended session.

Regulators generally view Video KYC as closer to in-person verification because it combines identity, intent, and presence within a controlled and auditable process rather than relying on isolated digital signals. This is where Video KYC fills the assurance gap that automated and document-only systems cannot address.

Regulatory Expectations for Video KYC Solutions for Banks in Global Markets

The regulators consider Video KYC solutions to banks through an evidence and risk-based approach that aims at understanding whether remote verification can provide identity assurance equivalent to the traditional means. The technology itself is secondary to the controls, documentation, and governance frameworks that surround its use. Consequently, the supervisory expectations in the regions are highly aligned, in places where regulatory texts are not identical.

Global regulators follow a technology-neutral approach to customer due diligence. FATF guidance allows the use of non-face-to-face onboarding methods when financial institutions apply enhanced controls and risk mitigation measures. Regional authorities such as BaFin, RBI, and EBA reinforce this principle by focusing on equivalence to in-person verification, evidence retention, and accountability rather than prescribing specific technologies.

Banks tend to fulfill a number of fundamental compliance principles:

• Customer due diligence (CDD): Banks need to demonstrate that the onboarded person is the genuine owner of the claimed identity with some credible and independent means of verification.
• Auditability and traceability: All verification activities should generate tamper-proof records for regulatory inspection.
• Human oversight and accountability: Automated operations should be controlled by certain governance, and there should be an escalation path, a reviewer responsibility, as well as decision ownership documentation.

In practice, banks rarely apply Video KYC uniformly. It is commonly triggered for higher-risk scenarios such as non-resident onboarding, politically exposed persons, cross-border customers, high-value accounts, or when automated checks return inconclusive results. This selective deployment aligns Video KYC with a risk-based AML framework while preserving efficiency for low-risk onboarding.

Global Regulatory Landscape: Where Video KYC Is Required or Permitted

Video KYC is formally required or heavily relied upon in jurisdictions with strict AML and identity assurance standards. Germany (BaFin) mandates video identification for remote onboarding, while India (RBI) requires VCIP for banks. 

Spain (SEPBLAC) and Switzerland (FINMA) permit video KYC as equivalent to in-person checks when supported by strong controls. Across the European Union, video verification is widely used to meet AML obligations and Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) requirements. 

Other regulators, including Singapore (MAS), Mexico, Latvia, and the Netherlands, permit video KYC under risk-based AML frameworks, particularly for high-risk or cross-border onboarding.

How Video KYC Prevents Fraud in Remote Onboarding and Support Risk-Based Approach?

Digital onboarding introduces a new range of identity risks to banks that go beyond falsification of documents. Synthetic identity and impersonation, as well as the Deepfake-based attacks, increasingly target remote account opening, where institutional checks may be limited. Document-only eKYC models are less effective against these sophisticated identity threats due to the lack of real-time verification of the presence and intent of a user.

During live sessions, trained reviewers can assess inconsistencies between document data and customer responses, detect signs of coercion, and identify unnatural behavior indicative of impersonation or deepfake use. Combined with liveness verification and document authenticity checks, Video KYC introduces a layered control that is difficult to bypass through automated attacks alone.

Video KYC enhances risk evaluation that includes live presence verification and behavioral and contextual indicators that can be observed when onboarding. 

Operational and Business Benefits of Video KYC Solutions for Banks Online

Video KYC solutions for banks online are not just about compliance with regulations, but also directly increase efficiency and business performance. Remote identity verification can be integrated into banks’ regular onboarding processes, delivering significant efficiency gains, faster onboarding, and an improved user experience without sacrificing control.

Key benefits include:

• Cost efficiency: Minimizes reliance on physical branches and reduces staffing and logistics, and improves compliance.
• Speed: Enables near-instant onboarding and access across geographies, including cross-border customers.
• Consistency: Ensures a uniform onboarding experience across regions and channels, as well as devices.
• Market reach: Allows customer acquisition in areas where it is either impractical or not possible to do so physically.

Collectively, these abilities enable banks to achieve growth goals without necessarily weakening the governance level, such that the scale of operations does not jeopardize compliance and risk management.

What Defines the Best Video KYC Solution for Banks in a Global Environment?

Selecting the best Video KYC solution for banks requires rigorous evaluation of features, compliance readiness, and operational scalability. In institutions that operate in more than one jurisdiction, the abilities should not be limited to local regulation demands because it would only guarantee identity assurance in one area.

Solutions designed for global banks must support these requirements without forcing market-specific workflows or fragmented compliance controls.

Key evaluation criteria include:

• Global coverage: Enables verification of government-issued IDs across multiple jurisdictions without workflow disruption.
• Biometric security: Confirms physical presence and prevents spoofing, deepfakes, and synthetic identity attacks.
• Deployment flexibility: Supports assisted, automated, and hybrid verification models, adaptable to varying risk levels and operational requirements.
• Data protection: Ensures secure handling of personal data in line with GDPR, CCPA, and comparable frameworks. 
• Scalability: Supports high-volume onboarding and rapid growth without performance degradation.

Global banks should avoid solutions that are limited to specific regions or rely on a single regulator. These options hinder growth and force banks to redesign their systems each time they enter new markets or adapt to changing compliance rules.

Video KYC Is the Foundation of Secure Digital Banking Worldwide

Video KYC has become a long-term customer identity verification standard, offering banks a dependable, auditable, and scalable way to verify the identity of customers remotely. When implemented by institutions, regulator-agnostic, globally adaptable solutions provide a quantifiable competitive benefit through a balance of operational speed and audit-ready controls.

The choice of an appropriate Video KYC solution has a direct impact on customer confidence, business stability, and compliance with the regulations. This renders video-based KYC a key building block of the current digital banking infrastructure.

How Shufti Delivers Video KYC Solutions for Banks at an International Scale?

Cross-border growth exposes banks without attended verification capabilities to higher identity risk, inconsistent regulatory interpretation, and audit scrutiny that document-only onboarding cannot withstand.

Shufti Video KYC enables banks to apply guided, auditable, and regulator-aligned verification without introducing operational friction or jurisdiction-specific redesigns.

Request a demo to evaluate how Video KYC can support compliant global onboarding strategies.