KYC (“Know Your Customer”) is the process by which a business identifies and verifies a customer’s identity. By law, KYC is required of certain businesses—such as banks, financial services, exchanges, custodial account services, etc.—in order to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

For example, in order to connect a custodial account to your Brave Rewards profile, your custodial account needs to have completed KYC (ID-verification).  

💡 What is a "custodian" or "custodial account provider"? A custodian is a company that holds your BAT for you. This includes crypto exchanges like Gemini or bitFlyer, and services like Uphold. 

Why do I need to KYC?

By default, no KYC or ID-verification is required to enable and use Brave Rewards. For example, users can enable Brave Ads and earn BAT without KYC. They can also enjoy in-platform features, such as BAT tipping, without ever having to KYC. At this time, the only cases in which a user must complete KYC verification are:

• Withdrawals: If the user would like to withdraw BAT from the platform (e.g., to an external Ethereum address or a service that permits such a function, including exchanging BAT).
• Deposits of external BAT: If the user would like to deposit additional BAT to be used inside the Brave Rewards ecosystem (for example, depositing externally-sourced BAT to tip to creators in the Brave Rewards ecosystem)

Doesn’t forcing KYC go against Brave’s stance on privacy?

Please note that users do not undergo KYC or ID-verification with Brave, but with their selected custodial account provider. Since Brave does not perform KYC or ID-verification, Brave never has access to your ID documents, etc. You can read our Privacy Policy, which outlines the information we receive from our custodial partners.