KYC vs AML Screening: What Each Control Actually Does
KYC verifies who the customer is. AML screening checks watchlists. You need both, and an AML API is not a document KYC product.
Teams collapse KYC and AML screening into one checkbox, then wonder why a clean ID still needs a review queue. They are different controls.
**KYC (Know Your Customer)** collects and verifies identity: name, date of birth, documents, sometimes a selfie. That answers “who is this?”
**AML screening** compares that identity to sanctions, PEP, and other watchlists. That answers “do they appear on a list we care about?” A perfect document can still be a sanctioned party. A clean screen without identity evidence is incomplete due diligence.
Where Naiza sits
Naiza is not a document OCR or liveness vendor. After you have a legal name and a stable externalId, call the AML screening API, persist the screening id, and route AUTO_CLEAR, REVIEW, or CONFIRMED into onboarding. Optional identity fields improve matching; they do not replace your KYC provider.
Use what KYC is, customer due diligence, and AML screening when you need citation-ready definitions. Enhanced due diligence is the extra pack after a PEP or other high-risk signal—not an automatic decline.
If you are choosing architecture, start with in-house screening vs an AML API and real-time vs batch AML.