What about overseas customers - can they be verified?
Yes, with the approach depending on whether the person is an Australian citizen abroad, a foreign national with a valid Australian visa, or a foreign national with no Australian link.
Overview
Yes. AUSTRAC's framework doesn't differentiate based on customer nationality - the standard is reliable-and-independent-source verification, which applies to everyone. What changes offshore is which documents can be electronically matched against an authoritative Australian register, and which can only be captured for the audit trail. The constraint is the scope of the Document Verification Service (DVS), not AUSTRAC: DVS doesn't reach offshore registers. Overseas KYC is priced the same as a domestic KYC.
The three cases
Australian citizen overseas - full electronic verification. Verified using an Australian-issued document, most commonly an Australian passport (matched against DFAT via DVS) or Australian driver's licence (matched against the issuing state register). The VOI link is sent by email and/or SMS and the customer completes the standard flow remotely; DVS, biometric comparison, liveness and screening all run as normal.
Foreign national with a valid Australian visa - full electronic verification. The visa is the bridge between the foreign passport and the Australian register: VEVO (Visa Entitlement Verification Online) / Home Affairs confirms the visa, the passport is matched via its MRZ, and biometrics and screening run normally. This is the most common offshore-staff scenario - offshore directors of Australian companies, international students on PR pathways, foreign investors with Australian property.
Foreign national without an Australian visa - document capture plus manual review. International passports and birth certificates are accepted and captured, but can't be matched against DVS or VEVO because the relevant Australian datasets don't include them. Verification falls back to: document authenticity checks (MRZ, document-quality indicators) and biometric comparison against the live selfie; a manual VOI workflow (for example via Australian Embassy attestation); and the firm's risk-based judgement. The transaction completes with a manual-review flag. AUSTRAC accepts that overseas-only verification carries more residual risk, so enhanced due diligence (source of funds/wealth) is typically appropriate and the lower assurance grade should be reflected in the customer's risk rating.
E-passports with a chip
Chip-read (NFC) verification is technically supported but currently requires the customer to install a separate app for the capture. Removing that separate-app step so the chip read works inside the main easyAML flow is on the roadmap.
Requirements that apply regardless of nationality
- At least one document must be in English for automatic data extraction; other-language documents can be captured as supplementary evidence but don't drive the automated flow.
- PEP, sanctions and adverse-media screening runs on every customer - the lists are global.
- Country of residence and country of citizenship are captured and factor into the risk rating.
Treat the visa-link path as the high-assurance default; the document-capture path is fully AUSTRAC-acceptable subject to your risk assessment but carries a lower assurance grade. See AUSTRAC's Overview of initial customer due diligence.