KYB confirms that a business you are about to work with is registered and active, who its representatives and beneficial owners are, and that none of them are on a sanctions list. ARGOS Omni is a Review Ops Agent that does this review, and KYB is one of the workflows it runs. Use it straight from the dashboard or connect it to your product through the API. Every ARGOS answer in the table below links to the public developer docs.
verificationStatus
Definition
KYB (Know Your Business) is the process of verifying a business you are about to work with: that it is registered and not closed, that the documents it submitted agree with each other, who its representatives and ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) are, and that neither the people nor the entity are on a sanctions list. A KYB API is how your product calls those checks.
Where KYC verifies a person, KYB verifies a legal entity. A business registration lookup is one step of KYB. Real onboarding adds document cross-checks, representative and shareholder checks, AML screening and a decision against your own policy. Providers differ in which countries and data sources they can query, how they read documents, how you set decision rules, how human review works and how you integrate.
Collect documents
Business registration, registry extract, shareholder information, payout account.
Verify the entity
Look up registration status and details, and cross-check the documents.
People and risk
Record representatives and UBOs and screen them against AML watchlists.
Decide
Each case is approved, rejected or sent to human review, with the evidence kept.
verificationStatus
Checklist
KYB comparison articles usually line providers up on country coverage, data sources, UBO checks and whether AML is included. These are the same questions, plus the ones about Korean business checks and integration. Every ARGOS answer links to the public developer docs.
| Criterion | What to ask any provider | ARGOS Omni | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registration status (Korea) | Can it look up from a registration number whether a business is active or closed? | ARGOS OmniLooks up taxpayer status (active or closed) and tax type from a Korean business registration number (Business Registration Status Check - KOR engine). | Docs ↗ |
| Business details (Korea) | Does it confirm the registration number, representative and opening date against public records? | ARGOS OmniChecks that all three match public records and, when they do, also returns the full status lookup (Business Info Verification - KOR engine). | Docs ↗ |
| Payout account owner (Korea) | Can it confirm the payout account belongs to the business? | ARGOS OmniLooks up the account holder name from a bank code and account number (Bank Account Owner Name Lookup - KOR engine). The rule for comparing it with the company name is written in your policy. | Docs ↗ |
| Businesses outside Korea | How does it verify a business registered in another country? | ARGOS OmniExtracts the legal name, registration number, incorporation date, address and representative from the submitted registry extract, business registration or certificate of good standing, and cross-checks the documents. The external registry engines in the public docs are Korea-only (- KOR). | Docs ↗ |
| Officer and entity AML | Are representatives, directors and the entity itself screened against sanctions and PEP lists? Can handling differ by risk level? | ARGOS OmniPeople are screened with AML Search - Person (name, plus date of birth and nationality when present) and the entity with AML - Business. You decide rejection or human review by risk code, such as current sanctions (SAN-CURRENT), current PEP (PEP-CURRENT) or regulatory enforcement (REL). | Docs ↗ |
| Beneficial owners (UBO) | How are shareholders and UBOs handled? | ARGOS OmniNames and ownership percentages are extracted from documents such as a shareholder register or beneficial ownership certification. You set the rules as sentences, for example "record every owner with 25% or more" or "send to human review if holdings total more than 100%". | Docs ↗ |
| Address validation | Is the registered address a real address? | ARGOS OmniVerifies that a postal address exists and normalizes it (Address Validation, 40 regions). Korea is not among the supported regions. | Docs ↗ |
| Document formats and size | Which document formats can it read? | ARGOS OmniPDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, images (JPG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF and more), TXT, Markdown, CSV, HTML and EML, up to 10MB per file and 100MB per business (profile). Images and PDFs go through OCR. | Docs ↗ |
| Your own policy | Can you use your onboarding policy as is? What happens when it changes? | ARGOS OmniWrite the rules as sentences and Omni builds an execution plan (playbook) from them, attaching the engines each clause needs. You can paste the KYB example from the policy writing guide and adapt it; workflows are created and edited in the dashboard. | Docs ↗ |
| Results and evidence | What format do results come in, and is the reasoning kept? | ARGOS OmniResults come back as JSON in the output schema you define. The verdict (verificationStatus) is verified, pending_review or rejected; every value carries its reasoning and source step, and external lookups are recorded in the audit log. The dashboard shows a report you can download as PDF. | Docs ↗ |
| Integration and testing | Dashboard or API? How do you test it? | ARGOS OmniCreate a business (profile), upload documents and run the analysis in the dashboard, or do the same through the REST API (x-api-key header). Analyses run asynchronously and you fetch the result. A trial project allows 10 analyses per day. | Docs ↗ |
| Pricing model | Per business, per check or per lookup? Are failed lookups billed? | ARGOS OmniCredit-based. Keeping a workflow available (daily), API operations such as creating a profile, adding documents and running an analysis, and engine calls are each deducted; engine calls are deducted only when they succeed. | Docs ↗ |
Korean businesses
Onboarding a Korean business starts with its business registration status and details. Omni has three engines for Korean businesses and bank accounts; write a clause such as "look up the registration status by business registration number" in your policy and the engine is attached automatically. The lookups run in the same workflow as the document cross-checks, AML screening and the decision.
Business Registration Status Check - KOR
Taxpayer status (active or closed) and tax type from a business registration number.
Business Info Verification - KOR
Whether the registration number, representative name and opening date match public records.
Bank Account Owner Name Lookup - KOR
The account holder name from a bank code and account number.
Engines whose names end in - KOR support Korean businesses and accounts only. State which country the business is in when you write the policy.
Example policy
Illustrative only. In practice you write your own criteria as sentences.
policy.md
How you use it
After creating the workflow, create a profile for each business, upload its documents and run the analysis. The results screen shows the verdict, each value with its reasoning and the steps the agent took, and a report you can download as PDF.
Create businesses, upload documents, run analyses and fetch results from your server. Base URL client-omni-api.argosidentity.com/v1, authenticated with the project API key (x-api-key header).
Cases with a pending_review verdict go to your reviewers, who can see in the dashboard which document and value each step relied on.
The developer docs are also served as Markdown that agents read easily, and results arrive as JSON in the structure you defined, ready to branch on. Only the workflow setup has to be done in the dashboard first.
API quickstart
Create the workflow in the dashboard, then make these calls for each business. Replace the IDs in braces with real values. The full example and responses are in the Omni quickstart.
Write your rules as sentences (the policy writing guide has a KYB example) and define the JSON structure you want back. Saving builds the execution plan in 2–3 minutes.
One business is one profile. Use the id and the default folder id from the response in the next step.
curl -X POST "https://client-omni-api.argosidentity.com/v1/workflows/{workflowId}/profiles" \
-H "x-api-key: $OMNI_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Example Co., Ltd.", "metadata": {"customer_id": "C-0142"}}'Upload each document once. Pass the item id from the response to the analysis.
curl -X POST "https://client-omni-api.argosidentity.com/v1/folders/{folderId}/items/upload" \
-H "x-api-key: $OMNI_API_KEY" \
-F "file=@business-registration.pdf" \
-F "name=business registration"Poll once per second until isRagReady is true.
curl "https://client-omni-api.argosidentity.com/v1/profiles/{profileId}/items/status" \
-H "x-api-key: $OMNI_API_KEY"It runs asynchronously and returns the analysis ID right away.
curl -X POST "https://client-omni-api.argosidentity.com/v1/analyses/{profileId}/analyze" \
-H "x-api-key: $OMNI_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"targetItems": [{"itemId": "{itemId}"}]}'Branch on verificationStatus and read your own fields from extractedData.
curl "https://client-omni-api.argosidentity.com/v1/analyses/{analysisId}" \
-H "x-api-key: $OMNI_API_KEY"Alternatives
Teams choosing a KYB API usually shortlist from the same group: Middesk, Persona, Sumsub, Trulioo, Alloy, Signzy and others. This page makes no claims about other vendors’ features or prices; check each vendor’s current documentation against the questions in the table above.
You want more than a registry lookup: document cross-checks, representative and UBO checks, AML screening and the decision in one flow.
You onboard Korean businesses (registration status, business details and payout account owner) and businesses elsewhere (from their documents) in the same workflow.
You want to write your onboarding policy as sentences and change only the sentences when it changes.
You want to start in the dashboard without engineering work and connect the same workflow through the API later.
Common questions when choosing a KYB API or business verification solution.
A KYB API lets your product call the checks that verify a business: registration status, document authenticity and consistency, representatives and beneficial owners, and AML screening. It returns a decision such as approve, reject or human review, along with the values it checked.
Yes. ARGOS Omni is a Review Ops Agent that reviews documents and data and decides each case, and KYB is one of the main workflows it runs. You set the criteria as sentences in the dashboard, then create businesses, upload documents, run analyses and fetch results in the dashboard or through the REST API. Other review work can be added the same way, not only KYB.
Yes. Korea-only engines look up taxpayer status and tax type from a business registration number, check that the registration number, representative name and opening date match public records, and look up a bank account holder name. Write the matching clause in your policy and the engine is attached automatically.
Yes. It extracts entity details from the submitted registry extract, business registration or certificate of good standing, cross-checks the documents and screens the representatives and the entity against AML watchlists. Addresses are validated in 40 regions. The external registry engines are currently Korea-only.
It extracts names and ownership percentages from documents such as a shareholder register or beneficial ownership certification and decides by the rules you set, for example "record every owner with 25% or more" or "send to human review if holdings total more than 100%". Beneficial owners can also be screened against AML watchlists.
Yes. It is a REST API authenticated with a single API key header. The developer docs are also available as Markdown, and results arrive as JSON in the structure you define, so agent-written code can branch on them directly. The workflow itself is set up in the dashboard first.
Yes. In the dashboard you create the workflow, upload each business’s documents, run the analysis, review the result and its evidence, and download the report as PDF. You can add the API integration later with the same workflow.
It is credit-based. A trial project allows 10 analyses per day. Talk to our sales team to get started.
Sales
Tell us which reviews your team does by hand today and the criteria behind them, and we will set up a test project with those criteria.
Every deployment starts with a 20-minute meeting. Share the policies and plans that shift with your business and the operating model you need — we'll deliver an agent orchestration that fits.
