KYB: What Crypto OTC Onboarding Requires

Why KYB exists

A regulated Money Services Business is legally required to know who it transacts with. In Canada, FINTRAC's framework under the PCMLTFA obliges an MSB to identify corporate clients, verify the natural persons who own and control them, understand the intended nature of the relationship, and monitor it on an ongoing basis. KYB (Know Your Business) is that process. It isn't the desk being difficult; it's the license under which the desk exists, and it's why banks accept the desk's settlements into your account.

The standard document pack

• Corporate documents: certificate of incorporation, articles, and registers showing the company's legal existence and good standing.
• Beneficial ownership: identification of natural persons holding (typically) 25% or more, directly or through intermediate entities, with an ownership-chain diagram for layered structures.
• Directors and authorised traders: government ID and proof of address for the people who will control the account.
• Source of funds / wealth: documentation of where the money or crypto comes from: financial statements, sale agreements, treasury policies, or on-chain acquisition history.
• Business profile: what the company does, expected volumes, currencies and corridors, and the purpose of the trading relationship.

Source of funds: the item people underestimate

Source-of-funds documentation answers a simple question with evidence rather than assertion: how did this business lawfully come to have these assets? For fiat, audited or management financial statements, invoices, or a funding round's closing documents usually suffice. For crypto, the desk will want the acquisition story: exchange purchase records, mining income, payment for services, or treasury conversion history, ideally matching the wallets you'll settle from. Clean documentation here doesn't just clear onboarding; it becomes the file you'll reuse with your own bank when fiat proceeds land.

The timeline, honestly

1. Day 0: submit the document pack through the desk's onboarding flow.
2. Day 0–1: compliance review: registry checks, sanctions and adverse-media screening of the entity and its owners, verification of IDs.
3. Day 1–2: clarification round if anything is incomplete (this is where unprepared applicants lose weeks).
4. Day 2: approval, account activation, settlement-instruction whitelisting, and the first trade.

GlacierPay onboards qualified businesses in 24–48 hours on this pattern. Complex structures (multi-jurisdiction holdcos, trusts, nominee arrangements) take longer by nature, because every layer must be looked through. If your structure is complex, say so upfront and provide the chain documentation unprompted; it signals exactly the transparency a compliance team is looking for.

What happens after approval

KYB is front-loaded by design. Once verified, you trade without per-transaction compliance interviews; the desk's ongoing obligations run in the background as transaction monitoring against your stated profile. Two things keep the relationship frictionless: keep your profile current (tell the desk when volumes, corridors or ownership change materially), and expect periodic refreshes; regulated MSBs must re-verify information on a cycle, which is routine when your file is clean.