The UAE government has launched the Know Your Customer (KYC) digital platform to provide accurate, comprehensive, and confidential data for financial transactions.
The platform is a key component of the country’s strategy to modernise its financial infrastructure, accelerate digital transformation, and establish a unified legal framework for customer identity verification.
It enhances transparency, ensures compliance with financial regulations, and strengthens national efforts to combat financial crime.
By providing a secure framework for verifying customer identities, the platform fosters greater trust in the UAE’s business and financial systems. Furthermore, it enhances the nation’s global fintech standing through advanced technological solutions tailored to the financial, banking, and insurance sectors, ultimately promoting a stable and sustainable economic environment.
The launch of the KYC platform is a significant step in strengthening the leadership of the UAE’s banking sector, positioning it among the world’s top banking industries. By adopting cutting-edge digital solutions, the platform provides an integrated mechanism for verifying customer identities and ensuring compliance with regulations.
The enhanced transparency in financial transactions, facilitated by the platform’s accurate and comprehensive data, empowers users to make informed decisions.
Furthermore, the KYC platform ensures the legal and regulated collection and use of customer data, streamlining information exchange between relevant authorities and bolstering cooperation in combating financial crime.
The UAE is setting up a new company to develop and manage the KYC platform, possessing the legal authority to conduct its operations. The new entity will be responsible for building and overseeing the platform, including managing the collection, storage, analysis, categorisation, use, exchange, and sharing of KYC data in accordance with national cybersecurity policies and standards.
Breaching KYC data confidentiality regulations will result in severe penalties, including a minimum two-year prison sentence and a fine of at least AED 50,000.
The UAE central bank will oversee and regulate the operations of the company managing the KYC platform. It will set the regulations under which the company conducts its activities and provides services, as well as establish a code of conduct for data providers and users.
The apex lender will define the standards for systems used to store, process, and safeguard data, and specify the customer data that the company can request from data providers.
