Banks: No more hassle with the know your customer app

On Monday, 12 April, the online application will be launched  «Know Your Customer» or «Introduce Yourself» in Greek, which aims to put an end to the inconvenience of citizens who are forced to submit tons of documents to banks in order to carry out their transactions. transactions or update their data.

As indicated in the relevant decision of the Minister for Digital Governance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, which was published in the Government Gazette, the purpose of the eGov-KYC electronic service is to digitize the procedures and means of verification of data applied to the customer by the credit institutions subject to the obligation, while the procedure for the extraction from the information systems of public sector bodies and the transmission of data required for the verification and verification of the identity and contact details, professional activity and annual income of natural persons, as well as the verification of their identity and contact details, is defined in detail.

The aim of the application is provide a digital channel between the public and private sectors, through which the private sector can extract data from citizens when needed with their consent.

Among these items are e.g. the statement from the TACHISnet, which often requires customers to go to the bank with which they work in order to update their details.

A prerequisite for the above is that the natural person must give explicit and specific consent, while each entity will be provided with the information relating solely to the categories of data necessary to complete the transaction and nothing more. Moreover, consent will not be given once, but will be requested each time data extraction is required.

The eGov-KYC e-service can be used by any natural person who has VAT NUMBER and TAXISnet codes.

The categories of natural person data that may be extracted and transmitted are:

• Identity details (Name, Surname, Patronymic, Matronymic, Date of birth, Place of birth, Date of issue of the identity card, Photo of the identity card, if kept in the register of the EL.AS, Authority of issue and Number of previous ID number.).
• Contact details (If registered in the National Contact Register, the residence address, contact address, e-mail address, mobile phone number and landline number, if available, can be obtained. In case the citizen has not entered the contact details in the National Register, it will be suggested, through the eGov-KYC service, to go to the N.M.E.P. to update the register).
• Income data (The online service can be used to retrieve, based on the applicant's VAT number, his/her actual income from all income categories, taxable or exempt or taxed in a special way)
• Data on the professional activity of a public employee
• Information on the professional activity of an employee with a dependent private-law employment relationship
• Information on the professional activity of a trader

Before consent is given, the eGov-KYC service will provide the natural person with the possibility to review his/her data as they are at the current time.

Provided that he/she gives explicit and specific consent to the eGov-KYC service, he/she will be redirected to the bank's environment. The consent will be valid only for the data extraction and transmission carried out each time and for the specific time at which it was given.

If the natural person refuses to give consent to the transfer of his/her data, he/she will be redirected to the bank's environment without any data transfer taking place.