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Why Uphold is different: we’re the pioneers of radical transparency 

We publish our assets and liabilities in real-time. 

We never loan out customer money… so it’s always available when you need it

Our highly experienced risk team includes ex-financial regulators and a former US prosecutor 

Our operating entities are domiciled and licensed in the US, UK, and EU

We’re subject to regular US State audits.

Why Uphold is different: we’re the pioneers of radical transparency

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At Uphold, we make it easy to buy and sell any major digital currency. You can invest, transfer or send/receive 200+ cryptocurrencies, 27 national currencies, 4 precious metals and 50 American equities.

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“I was blown away by how smooth the process of buying XRP was on Uphold...”

“I just wanted to share a quick note and let you know that you guys do a really good job.”

When you sign up, we collect your legal name, date of birth, and phone number. This helps us protect you from fraud and keep our community safe.

You don't have to verify your identity until you withdraw or send funds to other people. But you can do it earlier if you want.

To become a verified user, you’ll need to provide:

One of the following valid government photo IDs:
Government ID, Drivers Licence and Passport

Take a clear picture of your valid photo ID, where every detail is readable and clear. We can’t accept scanned documents.

Check the details on your ID match those on your Uphold account (legal name, no nicknames)

Make sure your photo ID is valid for at least three more months.

Please don't take a photo of a photo. Your selfie needs to be "live".

You can get step-by-step guidance for our new mobile app here or, if you're using the web or the mobile app previous to version 4.0, here.

Residents of the United States need to submit a Social Security Number. It's a tax thing!
Residents of China need to submit a valid government-issued identification number.
Residents of Russia need to submit an International Passport with Latin characters.

Definitely! We encourage businesses and developers to use our open API as a platform for innovation.

Get started by visiting our development home, Uphold Connect, where you can find our Developer Terms, API documentation, developer community blog, and message board, testing environment, and access to our Github.

Once approved, we showcase apps built on top of Uphold in our App Directory, providing you with an immediate audience for your offering.

Integrating with Uphold gives you instant access to the benefits of our platform, including free and instant transactions, a one-for-one reserve backing of holdings, a transparent transaction ledger, built-in AML and KYC, world-class information security, and accelerated time to market.

If you believe that your account has been compromised or hacked please let us know immediately so we can take proper actions and investigate:

If you’re logged in, using your Mobile app (version 4.44.1 or higher)

Please note: This will restrict your account and we’ll follow up with you usually within one hour.

Submitting your request here and we’ll restrict your account to prevent any withdrawals until it's fully secured.

Email us at support@uphold.com with “My account has been compromised” in the subject line and we’ll restrict your account to prevent any withdrawals until it's fully secured.

If you don’t have access to the email associated with your Uphold account

You can use another email address and add the following information:

The email address associated with your Uphold account

The last four digits of the phone number associated with your Uphold account

If you would like to use Uphold for your business, you need to apply for a business account. To begin the application process, please follow these steps:

Register on our website’s sign-up page. When creating an account, please be sure to select “Business” as the account type.

Once registered, log into your new account and locate the banner at the top of the page.

Click on the banner and it will take you to the application form.

To help the process flow smoothly, we’ve put together this guide with the information and documents you’ll need to submit. Unlike many platforms, we aim to reduce the hassle that often comes with opening a business account with a financial institution. We also offer support, if you have any questions regarding our business account offering or the business application process. 

What are the benefits of an Uphold business account?

An Uphold business account offers many benefits to our members, such as:

Higher transaction limits than personal accounts

The ability to link your company's bank account to easily add and withdraw funds

API integration allows for more payment options and automated payouts in multiple currencies

Supporting their payroll operations via our API integration 

Make instant payments using our new payment widget

How does Uphold keep my information secure?

Uphold has taken steps to provide an even higher level of standard than most financial services companies for all of our accounts in order to ensure your account and your personal information are secure.

Data Protection: As a licensed, global firm, Uphold is required to adhere to EU data protection requirements (GDPR), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) in the US, the People's Republic of China regulations to protect personal information, and all local, state, federal and International law to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and any personal data collected from our members is done in accordance with the highest industry standards.

Encryption: All the information you supply to us on the site is transmitted via Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

Processes: When you submit information to our system, we follow strict security processes to prevent any unauthorized access to your data. Data can only be accessed by authorized Uphold staff on a strictly need-to-know basis. All Uphold employees have passed thorough background checks, including criminal record checks, as part of the hiring process.

What information is needed to apply for a business account?

Legal Entity Name/DBA: The Legal Entity Name should match your business’s registration documentation and if you have a DBA that is different from your legal entity name, be sure to include that information. 

Legal Entity Type: This information should match the information provided on your business documentation. You will need to indicate if you are a Sole trader, Partnership, Registered Company (LLC, LTD, Inc., etc.), Publicly Trading Company, Government entity, or Pooled Investment Vehicles. 

Legal Entity Registration Number: Please provide your business’ Tax Identification Number (TIN), Employer Identification Number (EIN), company registration number, or equivalent official registration identification number.

Registered Address/Mailing Address: Please provide a physical address as PO Boxes are not accepted. 

Website: If applicable, be sure to provide a working link to a fully functioning and accessible website. 

Source of Funds/Source of Wealth: You will be asked to provide information on the source of funds and source of wealth for your business. The source of funds information should include an attached document and a description of where the funds that fund your account originated from. The source of wealth information should include a description of how the wealth for the business was acquired (i.e business revenue, donations, investments, inheritance, etc). 

Business Activity: You will be asked to provide details of your business and how your Uphold account will support your business. Please, answer these questions with as much detail as you can! You will be asked about your intended use of your Uphold account, what type of business activity you conduct, and how you perform this activity (i.e. store front, online, etc). 

Account Holder Information/Authorized Signer Information/Trustee Information: As the account holder, you will be asked to provide your full name, address, date of birth, a passport number/taxpayer identification number (SSN), an email, and you will be asked to upload proof of your current address. You will also be asked to provide the same information on other relevant parties (authorized signers, trustees, partners, etc). 

What documents are needed to open a business account?

To open a business account, you must first fill out the New Business Application form. Depending on your business type, you will be asked to provide some (but not all) of the following documents:

Articles of Incorporation, Articles of Organization, Certificate of Formation, By-laws or other business organization documentation

Registration extract, government document or equivalent confirming Tax ID, VAT, or TIN/​EIN, etc.

Certificate of Good Standing or equivalent confirming company name, status, and registered or trading address

Business organization documentation confirming current shareholders

Pages of the Trust or Foundation Agreements showing the full name of trustor/​founder, trustee/​foundation manager, and physical address

Form 990 or other evidence of tax filings (Equivalent of Tax Filing for Charities)

Source of Funds: You will be asked to upload documentation to verify your source of funds. This should include three months of bank statements or three months of brokerage firm statements. 

Additional Documentation/Information Needed: 

In addition to the above documentation, you will be asked to provide additional information specific to your business’ legal entity type. You will be asked to also provide, some (but not all) of the following documents:

List of all authorized signers, directors, company executives, partners, or trustees (as applicable)

Bank Statement, Commerce Registry, or Business Register Extract confirming legal or trading name, if applicable, and trading address

Corporate Resolution or equivalent supporting documents

Resolution/​Authorization/​Mandate Letter (on official letterhead) by competent authority to open an account

Identification of authorized signatories duly attested by the unit head

Proof of Identity: As the account holder, you’ll be asked to verify your identity by providing a copy of an ID document by completing an identity verification process and by providing proof of address. 

Additional Shareholders/Key Personnel: You will also be asked for information about any relevant shareholders, persons of significant control, or your organization’s trustees. For such individuals, we’ll ask for some basic details (such as date of birth and residential address), a document showing proof of address, and identity verification documentation. We’re required to do so to be compliant with financial regulations.

What documents can I use as proof of identity?

A valid government-issued identity document, such as:

Please note that the document has to be valid for at least another 6 months and we’ll need the front and back of driver’s licenses and ID cards. 

We do our best to verify our customers’ businesses electronically. However, in some cases, we may need to reach out to you to ask for more documentation or for missing documentation so we can successfully verify applicants and satisfy regulatory requirements. This is outlined in our General Terms and Conditions, section 1.3. 

What happens after I submit my application?

You will receive a message stating that your application has been submitted successfully. You will then receive an email asking to verify your identity and the identity of any other business owners, if applicable. If more documentation or missing documentation is needed, you will receive an email requesting additional information.

Once the identity verification process has been completed and your application has been approved, you will receive an email with the approval notice. 

Who can I contact if I have a question regarding the business account application process? For any questions you have, please contact our support team by clicking here!

Can I have more than one Uphold business account? No. At this time, Uphold allows only one business account per person. This is to protect you from a common type of identity theft fraud.

If you have any questions regarding our business account offering, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team!

At Uphold, we need to keep our community safe and adhere to regulatory compliance standards, which is why at some point we may need you to take a few minutes to verify your source of wealth and source of funds. If we require this information, you’ll be notified to upload the relevant files using a secure file link through SendSafely. 

Please note that we are required to collect this information for regulatory and compliance purposes. If this information is not provided, we may not be able to offer you services and may suspend or restrict your account

Below is a list of what documents you’ll need to provide to help us do this. There are two components of collecting proof of funds: Source of Wealth documentation and Source of Funds documentation. 

Examples of Source of Wealth documentation include:

Confirmation from employer confirming salary and bonuses

Sale of property confirmation from a solicitor and/or a contract of

Bank statements clearly showing receipt of funds and investment company name

A signed letter detailing funds from a regulated accountant

Inheritance - Probate and a copy of the associated Will, confirming the value of the estate and our customer as the benefactor

Signed letter from a solicitor on letter-headed paper

Loans: Proof of the loan agreement and the repayment period

Examples of Source of funds documentation include:

We only allow one account per person. This is outlined in our General Terms and Conditions in section 2.3. 

During routine account reviews,  we may detect duplicate accounts. If this happens, we place restrictions on both accounts, as mentioned above, and will reach out to you to resolve this situation. We do this to protect you from a common type of identity theft fraud.   

In all cases, we will request that you make a decision as to which account you would like to remain open and which account you would like to be closed. If you have funds in either and/or both accounts, we are able to transfer the funds to the account of your choice that you would like to remain open.

If you are notified by us that there may be more than one account on file for you, please send a message to support@uphold.com with the subject “Duplicate account” and we'll be happy to help.

Sometimes, in order to protect a member’s account, or to protect others, we will place an account in a “blocked” state temporarily in order to allow our team to investigate further. Please contact our support team for assistance. Please include your most recent ticket number for reference. 

Sorry, we’ve had to temporarily restrict your account

Sometimes, we reach out to our business customers to request additional or updated information. As a regulated firm, we must keep customer information up-to-date to meet regulatory requirements. 

After several attempts to contact you, we may place your account on temporary restrictions until we are able to obtain the required information. Most requests take a short amount of time to complete! To make sure this does not happen to you, please be on the lookout for any Uphold emails and information requests. 

We know it can be very frustrating when your account is restricted. Especially, if you believe you’ve done nothing wrong. Please understand that when we take an action like this there’s always a reason, and it’s not something we take lightly.

So let’s dive in and explain why we block or restrict accounts, and what you can do to reduce the risk.

Keeping you safe and complying with regulations

We are a regulated financial services company. That means we have to follow a lot of very specific rules and codes of conduct. In the US, we are a Money Services Business registered with the Department of Treasury. In the UK, we are registered with the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and in Seychelles with the FSA (Financial Services Authority). These bodies keep us in check and make sure we’re following all the relevant laws. 

Around the world, there are tough anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing rules intended to ensure businesses like ours implement strong systems to help combat the fight against financial crime. We also prioritize keeping our customers safe from illicit actors. 

Below we have listed some instances where we may have to take action on our customers’ accounts:

We restrict accounts when we think your money might be at risk

If our internal risk systems detect someone else may have access to your account, our internal controls can automatically restrict the account to protect your money. This happens rarely and only a very small portion of new logins are flagged as high risk.

We’ll reinstate your account once we have verified that you have logged in to the account and are not an imposter.

Restricting accounts can save people from losing money

For example, money muling is a type of fraud where people are coerced or paid to funnel illegal money through their accounts as a way to launder money. If coerced, these people could stand to lose their entire life savings if financial platforms didn’t do something to step in. If paid, these people are complicit in a serious financial crime and will be prosecuted.

So, for companies like Uphold that are trying to innovate and improve people's lives, there’s always a difficult balance between stopping people from having access to their money and protecting them from criminals draining their accounts. 

Ours is a highly regulated industry, and for good reason. These laws exist to help keep your money safe and stop bad actors!

We may restrict accounts when there has been no customer response to information  requests

As a regulated firm, we have to collect and maintain up-to-date information about our customers. To do so, we may reach out to you to request additional information or more information. After sending multiple requests via email, we may have to restrict your account until we receive the information we need. 

To avoid this situation from happening, please keep an eye out for any emails from Uphold. If you receive an email from Uphold regarding updating your information, please respond as quickly as possible to avoid disruptions in your account. 

Please note that Uphold will never reach out to you in an unsolicited manner and request additional information over the phone. Any and all communications with a customer will primarily take place via email and if a phone conversation is necessary to complete a request for information, internal Uphold staff will properly coordinate with a customer for a call. 

We also restrict accounts when we suspect criminal activity

To comply with the rules and regulations above, we continuously monitor our platform for any activity that appears out of the ordinary. We can’t explain in detail what we’re looking for, otherwise, the bad guys know how to get around our controls! But here’s some broad strokes insight into what may trigger a review for suspicious activity:

On fairly rare occasions, we’ll block an account that looks suspicious but after investigating find there’s a perfectly reasonable (and legal) explanation for the activity. When this happens we unblock the account and apologize to our customer.

Law enforcement tells us to block an account: 

If a customer of ours is associated with an ongoing investigation, we may be asked by law enforcement to put a hold or block on the account. We’re committed to doing our part in keeping the ecosystem safe for everyone!

We’ll always be in touch if we need to restrict your account. Depending on the reason, the review may take a few days. We’ll do our best to keep you in the loop throughout!

In the majority of cases, our reviews are completed quickly and we’re able to return your account to its former glory! And of course we’ll drop you a note to let you know once the review has been completed. 

In the rare case where we decide that we can no longer offer you an account, we’ll do our best to explain why. But as outlined above, there are certain instances where we can’t disclose the reasons due to legal constraints.

The following categories of businesses, business practices, and sale items are barred from using our services (“Prohibited Businesses”). Please note that Uphold HQ retains the right to reject any business applicant based on evolving risk tolerances and the requests of our banking partners.

By opening an Uphold HQ Account or Uphold Securities Brokerage Account (your “Account”), you confirm that you will not use the Uphold Platform to transact in connection with the following businesses, activities, practices, or items:

Operating as an unlicensed money transmitter, money service, payment service provider, e-money, or any other financial services business which requires licensure, including but not limited to exchanges of virtual currencies, sales of money orders or traveler's checks, and escrow services

Counterfeit products or any product or service that infringes upon the copyright, trademark, trade secrets of any third party, or stolen goods

Narcotics, controlled substances, prescription and pharmaceutical services, drug paraphernalia, or any substances designed to mimic illegal drugs (including legal high or cannabinoids)

Gambling, except where permitted by and with our prior written permission

Casinos, lotteries, and gambling (online or in-person)

Initial Coin Offering vehicles, except where permitted by and with our prior written permission

Prostitution (including internet adult content subscription services), adult entertainment, dating escort services

Violent acts towards self or others, or activities or items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others regarding the same

Extortion, blackmail, or efforts to induce unearned payments

Weapons and ammunition, including military manufacturers, dealers and intermediaries

Any business that violates any law, statute, ordinance or regulation

Acting in concert with others or through multiple accounts that you control in order to circumvent per-account trading limits

Funding any of the items included on this Prohibited Businesses list

You may not use your Account or the Uphold Platform to engage in the following categories of activity (“Prohibited Use”). You confirm that you will not use your Account to do any of the following:

Violate or assist any party in violating any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or any rule of any self-regulatory or similar organization of which you are or are required to be a member (for example, those laws, rules, or regulations governing financial services, controlled substances, or consumer protections)

Partake in a transaction that involves the proceeds of any unlawful activity

Partake in any transaction involving online gambling except where permitted and with our prior written permission

Defraud or attempt to defraud us or our users

Infringe our or any third party's intellectual property

Provide false, inaccurate, or misleading information

Take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure, or detrimentally interferes with, intercepts, or expropriates any system, data, or information

Interfere with another individual's or entity's access to or use of any part of the Uphold Platform

Defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate or infringe the legal rights of others

Publish, distribute or disseminate any unlawful material or information

Discover our FAQs to find answers to common questions about using Uphold so you can start trading digital assets with confidence. Find the answer at Uphold.com

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