UNIFICATION OF KYC PROCESS USINGBLOCKCHAIN

Know Your Customer (KYC) process is a mandatory verification step for availing any service from any service provider. The KYC process is done before getting a job, a broadband connection, a new sim card, applying for a license, a PAN card, opening an account in a bank, and many other such services. The customer submits a certain set of documents to the service provider which contains information that is required to complete the KYC process. This becomes a redundant process when the customer wishes to avail the same services from a different service provider because the same set of documents are used to verify the customer. This burden of the service providers can be minimized by unifying the process of KYC using the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). In this method, the KYC process is performed only once, and when the same user wishes to approach a different service provider, then the second service provider can obtain the customer's details without performing the whole process again but just by requesting the information using the correct credentials. Blockchain is a DLT that can be used for this purpose. Blockchain uses Smart contracts which are programs that perform specific tasks in the blockchain. Smart contracts are used to pass on customer information when certain conditions are met from one service provider to another.