KYC

KYC (Know Your Customer) is the mandatory identification process that regulated financial intermediaries perform on their clients. In the TON ecosystem KYC shows up wherever a service sits between a user and the fiat system or holds assets on the user’s behalf.

Where KYC applies in TON

• Centralised exchanges listing TON pairs (Bybit, OKX, MEXC, Bitget) require KYC for fiat withdrawals and to raise trading limits.
• Fiat on-ramps and off-ramps — services that buy or sell TON, USDT-jetton or other tokens for fiat (Mercuryo, MoonPay, regional providers wired into Wallet and Tonkeeper) usually trigger KYC above a small threshold, commonly around 700-1000 euros.
• Custodial wallets. The Wallet inside Telegram, when used via P2P or to raise limits, asks for verification.
• OTC desks and large transactions. Full KYC is essentially universal.

The TON blockchain itself has no KYC layer. An on-chain transfer between two non-custodial wallets neither requires nor permits identification because the protocol does not know who controls a given address.

KYC tiers

The industry typically splits verification by depth:

• Tier 1 / Basic. Email, phone, name, country of residence. Often enough for small operations.
• Tier 2 / Standard. Government ID, selfie with the document, sometimes a liveness video.
• Tier 3 / Enhanced Due Diligence. Proof of address (utility or bank statement), proof of source of funds (statements, contracts), occasionally a video interview. Applied to high-value operations and customers from high-risk jurisdictions.

Higher tiers unlock higher daily and monthly limits.

KYC and non-custodial wallets

Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet, Tonhub and any other wallet where the user owns the seed phrase do not run KYC. Regulators require identification from entities that hold third-party assets or convert crypto into fiat; a non-custodial wallet does neither by definition.

That said, if such a wallet integrates a fiat gateway through a third-party provider (as Tonkeeper does for its Buy feature), KYC is still performed — but on the provider’s side, not the wallet’s.

What gets stored, and for how long

Under FATF guidance and most national regimes, services keep KYC data for around 5-7 years after the customer relationship ends. An exchange can be ordered to disclose those records at any time in response to a regulator or law-enforcement request.

Practical takeaways

• If on-chain privacy matters, keep funds in a non-custodial wallet and avoid unnecessary KYC services.
• For large fiat operations, expect Enhanced Due Diligence and prepare source-of-funds documentation in advance.
• Never send KYC documents through Telegram chats or unverified “P2P operators” — this is a common attack vector that leads to identity-theft scams.

This is general information, not legal advice; specific requirements depend on jurisdiction and change over time.