Compliance & Verification Overview

Before investors can send money, the platform needs to verify their identity. This is a legal requirement for any financial platform and protects both the investors and the companies receiving investment. Play Money uses automated verification processes that run in the background, requiring minimal admin involvement in most cases.

Why Verification Exists

• Legal requirement -- Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) regulations require financial platforms to verify the identity of anyone sending or receiving funds.
• Fraud prevention -- verification helps prevent identity theft, money laundering, and other fraudulent activity.
• Investor protection -- confirming identities protects legitimate investors from having their information misused.

Two Types of Verification

KYC (Know Your Customer)

KYC verifies individual people. When someone invests as an individual, their personal identity is verified.

• What's checked: Name, date of birth, address, government ID (SSN for US persons, national ID for international)
• Who needs it: Individual investors using ACH bank pull
• See: KYC Verification

KYB (Know Your Business)

KYB verifies business entities. When someone invests through an LLC, corporation, partnership, or trust, the entity itself is verified.

• What's checked: Entity name, registration details, control person (the individual who controls the entity)
• Who needs it: Investors using entity-type investment profiles (LLC, Corporation, Partnership, Trust)
• See: KYB Verification

Wire and External Bypass

Not all investments require KYC/KYB verification. The current policy bypasses verification for:

• Wire transfer investors -- verification is not currently required for wire payments
• External funding sources -- IRA and DAF (Donor Advised Fund) investors bypass platform verification because their custodian or sponsor handles it independently

This means an investor paying by wire can proceed to payment immediately, even if their identity hasn't been verified.

Verification is Non-Blocking

A key design principle: verification does not block the investor from committing to an investment. Here's the flow:

1. Investor signs up and provides their identity information during onboarding
2. Investor commits to an investment
3. Verification is submitted in the background
4. If verification passes, payment is automatically initiated
5. If verification has issues, the investor is contacted to provide additional information

The investor never has to wait for verification to complete before expressing interest in a deal. The system handles the sequencing automatically through the readiness evaluation.

What Admins Should Know

• Most verification is automatic -- you don't need to manually submit or approve verifications. The system handles it.
• Check verification status for stuck investments -- if an investment is sitting in "committed" for a long time, verification may be the blocker. See Verification & Readiness.
• Verification issues need attention -- when an identity or profile is in "needs_info" or "rejected" status, admin intervention may be needed. See Document Remediation.
• Wire/external bypass is by design -- don't be alarmed if wire investors don't have completed verification. This is intentional.

In This Section

• KYC Verification -- individual identity verification
• KYB Verification -- business entity verification
• Verification & Readiness -- how the system decides what happens next
• Document Remediation -- handling verification issues