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The Customers API is available to select partners during onboarding, and currently supports KYC of US individuals only. If you’re interested in using this product, get in touch and our team will follow up to discuss fit.
Not yet onboarded for Live? Try the Customers API in Sandbox. Live access is limited to onboarded partners; Sandbox is available to everyone.
The Customers product lets you onboard your users to Coinbase behind the scenes, giving them access to crypto payments, trading, and custody under your own brand. Standing up an end-to-end crypto compliance program takes significant time and resources: KYC (Know Your Customer), identity verification, sanctions screening, fraud protection, tax reporting, ongoing monitoring, and regulatory coverage. The Customers product offers KYC as a service, giving you direct access to Coinbase’s compliance infrastructure so that you can quickly launch crypto products without building the compliance infrastructure from scratch. Customers verified through the KYC program can also use Base Ledgers, Coinbase’s private payments product on Base, to move money onchain confidentially. You own the customer experience. Coinbase powers the compliance infrastructure. Your customers get access to the crypto economy.

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How it works

You manage the customer relationship, collect their information, surface any steps they need to complete, and check what they’re authorized to do before initiating an operation. Coinbase runs the underlying KYC / compliance program, verifying identities, running sanctions screening, making compliance determinations, and monitoring your customers on an ongoing basis.

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Initial and ongoing compliance

When a customer first onboards, Coinbase runs a full compliance review (identity verification, sanctions screening, and due diligence) before any capability is activated. Compliance doesn’t stop at onboarding. Coinbase continuously monitors your customers over time, rescreening against updated watchlists, reviewing activity for unusual patterns, and collecting compliance events as they occur.

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Capabilities

A customer’s actions are built around a set of capabilities: specific actions your customers can take, from holding a balance to sending a transfer to placing a trade. Each capability has a set of requirements associated with it. When you submit a customer’s information, Coinbase evaluates it against those requirements and returns which capabilities are active, which are pending, and what’s still needed to unlock others. See the Capabilities page for the full set and what each one requires.
Use Customers when you need to enable custody, transfers, or trading on behalf of an end-user.

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Core objects

The API is built around three objects you’ll interact with throughout a customer’s lifecycle:

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Next steps

Customers

Customer records, identity fields, and the verification lifecycle

Capabilities

All capabilities, statuses, and how to check them

Requirements

Resolve outstanding requirements, Terms of Service, and tax attestations