# KYC (Know Your Customer)

> KYC is the identity-verification process, mandatory for regulated financial services, that many messaging providers also impose on senders: ID documents, company registration and a review before an account can send.

Know-your-customer rules exist in banking and payments law to prevent money laundering. Messaging is not a regulated financial service, but most providers adopted similar checks to protect their carrier relationships: passport scans, company papers, use-case questionnaires, sometimes a call with sales. The process filters by paperwork rather than by behaviour, and it excludes sole traders, teams in countries with slow registries and anyone who does not want a vendor holding their identity file.

What the law actually regulates in messaging is content and consent. A provider can enforce those without knowing who you are.

At SMSMeteor: there is no KYC: an email address opens the account, and the acceptable use policy governs what is sent. See [what no-KYC means here](https://smsmeteor.com/no-kyc-sms).

Related terms: [No-KYC (SMS gateway)](https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/no-kyc), [Acceptable use policy](https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/acceptable-use-policy), [CPaaS](https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/cpaas)

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Source: https://smsmeteor.com/glossary/kyc (HTML). Generated by SMSMeteor from the same data as the page. Summary of the whole site: https://smsmeteor.com/llms.txt