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by weego 2021 days ago
Outsourcing KYC is essential if you want preventative measures. Having your own just allows you to learn from getting stung.
2 comments

So much this. I would have zero interest in building out kyc vs having stripe do it for me
It’s a question of defensibility if some regulator came to you and asked why you allowed certain individuals through because a black box told you without any additional context.

And I don’t think anyone builds their own KYC from ground up - it’s more whether you have context for a decision with your own vendor implementation vs a black box yes or no.

Isn’t it Stripe’s partner bank that is ultimately underwriting all the KYC on a platform like this? I assume they’ve signed off on how Stripe has implemented it so as to be sufficiently defensible
Ding ding. Notice to open the Treasury account, you need to specify the bank. Stripe is not owning the accounts, the bank is, so KYC is pushed to them.

EDIT: For those that think that just opening the accounts as Stripe would be a workaround, the answer to that is "beneficial ownership" and is part of KYC.

Ah, this is illuminating. So the built an API to interface developers with existing bank infrastructure (likely to support their own operations).

They're not the treasury, they're the link that doesn't require me to be a huge entity with bargaining power to convince a bank to partner with me.

TIL that Stripe's Treasury service is a marketplace connecting bank treasury services to marketplace services that require a treasury.
Corollary: Outsourcing KYC means they learn from you getting stung.
Which in turn means you benefit from everyone else who's already been stung. KYC solutions' risk:reward ratios start high, but asymptotically approach 0 as the provider learns from its customers' problems. If you're signing up for a well-established one, you're able to free-ride on all the learning that's already been done.
You can have your cake and eat it, too: - Start with a third-party KYC solution - Slowly develop your own and compare the results with the one from the provider - When your own solution provides something similar to the other one, you can abort the subscription
Sort of like Apple cutting out Intel :P