Verifying your business in Australia

This article details documents that are required for organisations to open an account with Airwallex if your business is registered in Australia.

Verification, known as KYC or ‘Know your customer’, is a process that is required by regulators to offer financial services to organisations and individuals. It involves reviewing and maintaining information on parties that use our financial services.

The overall verification process can be broken into two key components - Business Verification, and People verification.

Verifying the business
Verifying connected individuals
Other additional requirements

Verifying the business

Verifying the business involves identifying and understanding the business entity looking to become a customer of Airwallex.

In Australia, we require the business entity to have an active and current ABN, which we will be used to identify the business entity.

For certain type of business entity, we may require additional documentation to verify and understand the entity, including but not limited to:

Companies - company shareholding structures (where there are intermediate foreign shareholdings)
Partnerships - Partnership Deeds
Trusts - Trust Deeds
Other types of legal entities will also require some form of documentation such as documents of incorporation

In addition to this, we will also need to understand the nature of business activities - including gathering sufficient evidence of these activities. Depending on your business, this may be include:

Websites and other customer-facing evidence of business
Bank Statements
Audited Financial Statements or Tax Returns
Supplier and/or customer invoices (or contracts of sale)
Detailed business plans (for new businesses)

Verifying connected individuals

As part of verifying your business, we will also be required to verify the key people connected to the business. This includes both:

The applicant/authorized account owner - often referred to as the Person Purported to Act (PPTA)
Beneficial Owners of the business - these are individuals who ultimately have control of the business entity. Depending on the type of legal entity, these may be individuals holding different types of positions, but will generally include major shareholders, partners, trustees, and other types of business owner or key controllers.

This verification will include:

Verification of the Identity of the Individual (requiring ID Documents)
In the case of the PPTA, evidence of authorisation by the business to act on behalf of the business (PPTA Letter)

Other Additional requirements

There may be other requirements or documentation which may be required. These will be in line with Airwallex's general customer identification procedures, and may differ depending on the type of business, the nature/industry of your business activities, and any other factors which may affect our assessment of risk.

Additional ID documents (Additional forms of ID)
Evidence of Source of Wealth or Source of Funds
Evidence of required licenses/regulatory compliance in your industry
Evidence of your business' AML policies and procedures
Additional detail or documentation around your intended use of the Airwallex platform

Examples of Required Documentation and Available Forms

Below we have provided more specific details about the types of documents that you may need to submit as part of the KYC process covering:

Personal Information
Authorisation Letter
Shareholding Declaration
SMO Declaration Form
NFP Declaration Form
Partnership Agreement
Financial Institution Onboarding Questionnaires
Investment Onboarding Questionnaires
Live- Streaming Questionnaire
Marketplace Questionnaire
New Business Supporting Documents

Personal information

Personal ID

Please provide a photo image of a valid government-issued ID such as Drivers Licence or Passport.

Some valid ID examples are provided below:

1) Passport - All Countries

2) Driver's Licence - e.g. Australian sample

Note that if the IDs to be provided are not Australian IDs, we will require the applicant to either go through a Liveness verification process, or alternatively have their IDs certified according to the laws and regulations of the issuing country.

Authorisation Letter

Please provide a letter signed by a Beneficial Owner or Director which authorises the applicant to open and act on the account on behalf of the company.

Click here to download the Authorisation Letter Form

If your business has multiple legal entities that are registered in different countries/regions and would like to onboard them all at once, you may use this Global Authorisation Letter Template, instead of using a separate template per each country/region.

Click here to download the Global Authorisation Letter Template

Foreign Shareholding Structure

If your company has foreign shareholdings in the structure (including foreign intermediate holdings), please complete the following declaration form and provide the information required in the form.

Click here to download the Ownership Structure form

SMO Declaration Form

If there is no single individual holding >25% of the shares in the onboarding company, please fill out the following declaration form and provide the documents mentioned in the form.

Click here to download the SMO Declaration form example

NFP Declaration Form

If your entity is a registered NFP/Charity, please download the form below and provide us with the necessary declaration.

Click here to download the NFP Declaration form example

Financial Institution Onboarding Questionnaires

If the Airwallex account will process funds of your underlying clients, please complete the following questionnaire and provide all requested supporting documents

Click here to download this questionnaire

If the Airwallex account will ONLY be used as an operational account (i.e. operational expenses), please complete the following questionnaire and provide all requested supporting documents

Click here to download this questionnaire

Investment Onboarding Questionnaire

If the Airwallex account is for a company that will engage in investment activities, please complete the following questionnaire and provide all requested supporting documents

Click here to download this questionnaire

If the Airwallex account is for a trust/family trust that will engage in investment activities, please complete the following questionnaire and provide all requested supporting documents

Click here to download this questionnaire