A beneficial owner is an individual who owns or controls a business customer. Regulations require you to know these people, so PCE captures them when the business is onboarded and screens each one for compliance. You don't add beneficial owners on their own; you retrieve the ones already on file to review ownership and confirm they've cleared screening.

🏢
Captured at onboarding, retrieved here
Beneficial owners are provided as part of the business customer's details. This page covers the read side: listing the owners on file and reading their verification status. Only business customers have beneficial owners.

Common use cases

Meet KYC and beneficial-ownership rules by confirming who owns a business and their ownership percentage.
Verify that each owner has cleared OFAC and CIP screening before the business transacts.
Identify which owner can act as an authorized signatory for the business.
Pull the full ownership picture for an audit or periodic review.

Review a customer's beneficial owners

Retrieve every beneficial owner on file for a business customer to see who they are, how much they own, and where each one stands on compliance screening.

Make a GET request to /v1/customer/id/{customerId}/beneficialOwner (or the externalId variant, /v1/customer/externalId/{customerExternalId}/beneficialOwner).

Request

GET /v1/customer/id/4015210/beneficialOwner

Response: 200 OK

The response is a list, one entry per owner. Each entry carries the owner's identity, mailing address, ownership details, and verification status.

[
  {
    "id": 9742,
    "firstName": "Pranjal",
    "lastName": "Yadav",
    "fullName": "Pranjal Yadav",
    "last4ssn": "6789",
    "dob": "05/09/1900",
    "homePhone": "123-456-7890",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "mailingAddress": [
      {
        "id": 1033283,
        "addressLine1": "2343",
        "addressLine2": "Gary Street 2",
        "city": "New York",
        "state": "NY",
        "zip": "10001",
        "isPrimary": true
      }
    ],
    "verification": {
      "ofacStatus": "VERIFIED",
      "ofacStatusReason": "Verified",
      "ofacStatusDate": "08/11/2023 05:29:21",
      "cipStatus": "VERIFIED",
      "cipStatusReason": "Verified",
      "cipStatusDate": "08/11/2023 05:42:15"
    },
    "actAsAuthorizedSignatory": false,
    "businessDetails": {
      "ownershipPercentage": 96.0,
      "title": "Owner"
    },
    "secondaryIdentification": {
      "lastFourId": "8899",
      "id": "qr34578899",
      "type": "DRIVER_LICENSE",
      "stateOfIssuance": "NY"
    },
    "pullCreditReport": true
  }
]

What the response tells you

Field	What it means for you
`firstName`, `lastName`, `fullName`	The owner's name on file.
`last4ssn`	The last four digits of the owner's SSN (full SSN is never returned).
`dob`, `homePhone`, `mobilePhone`, `email`	The owner's contact and identity details.
`mailingAddress[]`	The owner's address(es); `isPrimary` marks the primary one.
`businessDetails.ownershipPercentage`	How much of the business this person owns.
`businessDetails.title`	The owner's role or title in the business.
`actAsAuthorizedSignatory`	Whether this owner can sign on behalf of the business.
`verification.ofacStatus`	Result of sanctions (OFAC) screening for this owner.
`verification.cipStatus`	Result of identity (CIP) screening for this owner.
`secondaryIdentification`	A supporting ID (for example a driver's license) captured for the owner.
`isUSCitizen`	Whether the owner is a US citizen.

Verification & compliance

Every beneficial owner is screened as part of onboarding the business:

OFAC screening checks the owner against sanctions lists. Read the result from verification.ofacStatus.
CIP (Customer Identification Program) verifies the owner's identity. Read the result from verification.cipStatus.

A business is not fully cleared until its beneficial owners pass screening, so use these fields to confirm the ownership picture is verified before the customer transacts. If an owner's details are wrong or screening fails, correct them on the business customer (owners are captured there), then retrieve the list again to confirm the updated status.

Best practices

Practice	Description
Check screening before transacting	Confirm every owner's `ofacStatus` and `cipStatus` are cleared before relying on the business account.
Reconcile ownership periodically	Re-list owners on a schedule to keep your records aligned with the business's current ownership.
Never store full SSNs	Only `last4ssn` is returned; keep it that way in your own systems.

Next steps

Authorized Users

Add and manage the people a business authorizes to act on its account.

Open an Account

Capture a beneficial owner's acceptance of the account agreement.

Beneficial Owners

Captured at onboarding, retrieved here

Review a customer's beneficial owners

What the response tells you

Verification & compliance

Best practices

Next steps

See also