An Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) is the ultimate beneficiary of a business, and can be a person or an entity. Identifying and verifying the UBOs of a business helps us prevent unlawful activities. It's also a regulatory requirement for some regions, so depending on where your business is registered, we may have to ask to verify the identity of the UBOs of that business.
Learn more about how Wise verifies businesses and why we need to verify businesses
Who counts as a UBO?
Any individual who ultimately owns or controls 25% or more of the shares or voting rights in the body corporate.
Any individual who exercises ultimate control over the board of directors and has the right to appoint or remove the majority of the board.
What types of identification do you accept?
To verify the identity of a UBO, the document needs to have the person's name, photo and date of birth.
We accept valid versions of the following standard documents:
Passport (photo page only)
National ID card (with the exception of US military IDs)
Photo driving licence (we don't accept Electronic Driving Licences)
Note: We do not accept driving licences in the European Economic Area (EEA)
Regional exceptions and other accepted documents
Depending on where your business is registered or where the UBO lives, specific country rules or additional document types may apply.
Check How does Wise verify my identity? for the list of regional exceptions and accepted documents.
If you can't provide any of the documents listed, reach out to our support team and let us know what documents you have. Our team will be happy to support you.
What do you do with this information?
We only ask for information we need, so that we can run security checks and verify our customers. So we use the information we ask to stay compliant.
Protecting your information is very important to us. All data, financial details, or documents you give us are stored securely, encrypted, and kept private as per our privacy policy.
When will Wise get back to me?
We'll aim to get back to you in 5 working days, whether to verify you or to ask for more information. We'll email you once we've verified you. So be sure to check the email you use to log in to Wise first, or go into your notifications on the app or web.
But if you haven't heard from us in that time, you can reach out to our Support team and ask for the status. And if you have a transfer already in progress, we'll automatically resume it.
What if my document didn't get accepted?
We hope you don't run into any issues while we verify you, but in case you do, here are some common reasons we might not accept a document:
Unclear image: Some important information might be covered or blurred. We need to see the full document photo page and the image needs to be clear.
Expired: Please check that the document is still valid before you upload it, as we can't accept expired documents.
Details don't match: Please check that you've entered the UBO's name and date of birth correctly on the website. If the details don't match, we can't accept the document.
Missing file: We may also need to see the back of the document. If there is information on both sides, please make sure you upload both for us.
Wrong document type: It may be a document type that we can't accept.
Wrong format: It may be in a format we can't accept, like .doc or .docx.