KYC in India: the types, and when each applies.
Know Your Customer (KYC) is the process by which regulated institutions verify who a customer is before offering them financial services. In India the framework is set by the RBI's KYC Master Direction, and it comes in several distinct flavours.
The main types
- Full KYC (in-person): the traditional branch process with physical documents and in-person verification.
- Aadhaar eKYC: electronic verification against the Aadhaar database, typically via OTP or biometrics, used where permitted.
- V-CIP (Video Customer Identification Process): a live, recorded video session with liveness checks and document display, treated as equivalent to in-person verification under RBI norms.
- CKYC: the Central KYC Registry, where completed KYC records are filed so other institutions can fetch them instead of repeating the process.
- DigiLocker & OCR flows: document collection through issued digital documents or scanned images with automated extraction.
What you'll be asked for
Every route needs two things: proof of identity and address from an officially valid document (OVD), and your PAN, or Form 60 if you don't have one. The RBI's list of OVDs is short: passport, driving licence, proof of possession of an Aadhaar number, voter ID, NREGA job card, and the letter issued by the National Population Register.
Which KYC applies when
| Route | Typical use | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| In-person / branch | Any account or loan | Slowest; needs a visit |
| V-CIP (video KYC) | Full accounts and loans, opened remotely | Needs a trained official live on the call; the customer must be in India |
| Aadhaar OTP e-KYC (non-face-to-face) | Quick digital account opening | Comes with caps on balance, credits and loan amounts until full KYC is done |
| CKYC download | Customers who've done KYC elsewhere | Only works if a complete record already exists in the registry |
The OTP route is the one people misunderstand. Under the RBI KYC Master Direction, an account opened with Aadhaar OTP e-KYC and no face-to-face step carries limits: the aggregate balance can't cross ₹1 lakh, total credits in a year can't cross ₹2 lakh, and term loans are capped at ₹60,000 a year. The customer has to complete full KYC within a year, or the account can't continue as is. For a fuller picture, see Aadhaar e-KYC and V-CIP.
CKYC: doing it once
When a bank completes your KYC, it uploads the record to the Central KYC Registry run by CERSAI and you get a 14-digit KYC identifier. The next lender can pull your record with that number instead of asking for everything again. More on how that works in our CKYC explainer.
KYC isn't a one-time event
RBI requires banks to refresh KYC periodically, based on how risky they rate the customer: at least every two years for high-risk customers, every eight years for medium risk and every ten years for low risk. If nothing has changed, a self-declaration through the bank's digital channels is usually enough. The details are in re-KYC explained.
Why onboarding funnels leak
Every extra step in a KYC flow loses applicants. Manual document review adds days; failed OCR forces re-uploads; poorly run video sessions get rejected in audit. The institutions that win onboarding treat KYC as an engineering problem: automate extraction, verify PAN and Aadhaar via APIs, run V-CIP with proper liveness detection, and push records to CKYC automatically — which is what ZyroAI Digital KYC does end to end.