Beneficial Owners & Authorized Users
The people behind a business customer: who owns it (beneficial owners) and who is authorized to act on it (authorized users), and how to retrieve and manage them.
Behind every business customer are people. Some own or control the business, and some are authorized to act on its behalf. PCE keeps track of both so you can meet your compliance obligations and give the right people the right access.
This section covers the two entities and the jobs you do with them. Both apply to business customers only; an individual customer has neither.
Business customers onlyBeneficial owners and authorized users exist only for a business customer. They are the individuals tied to that business, not separate customers. To work with the business itself, see Accounts.
Which one do you need?
| Who they are | Beneficial owner | Authorized user |
|---|---|---|
| Role | An individual who owns or controls the business | An individual the business authorizes to act on its behalf |
| Why they exist | To satisfy Know Your Customer (KYC) and beneficial-ownership rules | To give a person access or signing authority on the business's account |
| How they're captured | Provided when the business customer is onboarded; you don't create them separately | Added, updated, and managed on their own after the customer exists |
| What you do here | Retrieve and review them (read-only) | Create, update, retrieve, and list them |
Start here
Review who owns or controls a business customer, and their verification status, to satisfy KYC and ownership rules. Retrieve the owners captured at onboarding.
Add the people a business trusts to act on its account: authorized signatories, portal users, and more. Create, update, retrieve, and list them.
Common use cases
- Confirm who owns a business and how much of it, to meet KYC and beneficial-ownership requirements.
- Check that every owner has cleared compliance screening (OFAC and CIP) before the business transacts.
- Give an officer or employee the ability to act as an authorized signatory on the business's account.
- Grant a team member portal access with a specific role.
- Keep an authorized user's contact details current as the business changes.
- Pull the full list of owners or authorized users for an audit or periodic review.
See also
- Accounts: the business customer and the accounts these people are tied to
- Open an Account: capture a beneficial owner's acceptance of the account agreement
- Getting Started: authentication, webhooks, idempotency, and shared setup
Updated about 10 hours ago