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. 

💡You can also connect your Brave Rewards to a self-custody account, like Brave Wallet. There is no third-party or custodian holding your assets for you with this option.

Why do I need to KYC?

KYC or ID-verification is required to enable and use Brave Rewards if connecting with via custodian. A user must complete KYC verification to access the following:

• Earning/Accruing: To begin earning and accruing BAT for Brave Ads, you will need to connect a custodial account.
• 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. 

Note: You can also connect your Brave Rewards to a self-custody account, like Brave Wallet. There is no third-party or custodian involved with this option.