Opening an account
What you will need
An identity document, an address, and about ten minutes. You will also be asked where you are resident for tax, where the money comes from, and whether you hold a public office. None of it is long, and it is all asked before the account exists rather than after.
Both documents can be a photo or a scan — a JPEG, a PNG or a PDF — up to 5 MB each. A file of the wrong kind is refused before it is stored, with the reason stated rather than a silent failure.
The five steps
- Register. You create a customer record with your name, your contact details and a password.
- Verify your identity. Your document is checked against the details you gave, and the check returns a match, a no-match, or a request for a clearer image.
- Screening. Your name is compared against a watchlist, allowing for spelling that is close but not identical.
- An officer reviews. A person reads the result of the two checks and decides. Higher-risk applications are read by two officers rather than one.
- The account opens. On approval, and only on approval, your account is opened for you.
No rule approves an application on its own. The checks gather evidence and score it; the decision is made by a named officer, and the reason is recorded against your application with their name on it. An application can also come back to you asking for more, which is a step in the process rather than a refusal.
How long each step takes
Registering takes as long as it takes you to type. Identity verification and screening both run against local simulated data today and return while you wait, in seconds rather than days. The officer review is the step with no fixed length: the application sits in a queue until an officer opens it. Opening the account is immediate once the review is approved.
A real bank would measure the first three steps in minutes and the review in days. The shape of the process is the same; only the waiting has been taken out, so that every branch of it can be demonstrated in one sitting.
What happens today
Every step above is live today: registering creates your customer record, and once you are signed in the five-step form collects exactly what this page describes and nothing more. Submitting it runs the identity check and the screening automatically, in seconds, and places the application in a queue for an officer — occasionally two — to review. The outcome is either an approved account, an application that is not successful, or a request for more detail, which you see the next time you sign in.