Rayls Public Chain KYC Overview

Large financial institutions around the world need to know the identity of entities they’re transacting with to meet their jurisdiction’s various regulations. This is called Know Your Customer (KYC), or if this is between commercial entities, this is Know Your Business (KYB). Since such KYC checks aren't normally part of blockchains, this means the existing large scale Ethereum L2 blockchains are simply not fit for purpose for large financial institutions: this is where the Rayls Public Chain comes in.

Additionally, these KYC processes that are normally part of an onboarding process, usually require a person to upload various forms of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to a service that then checks someone’s identity to then issue a KYC credential. This can involve pictures of a passport, utility bill, and a portrait photo etc. This is an okay process, but can take a few days to validate and obviously exposes various privacy risks.

For the Rayls Public Chain KYC we’ve decided to do something different. Considering anyone with a bank account in most countries in the world has already completed the KYC process, we’ve developed a system where someone needs to only authenticate with their existing bank to prove they’re a real person. This process takes as long as it normally takes to log into an internet banking account making it an extremely quick process. Since we’re reusing an existing KYC provider as well, this is an extremely privacy preserving method of proving someone has a real bank account.

To see how this works in practice, jump to the next section on how to use the Rayls Public Chain.