Shopify for KYB?

Shopify is worth $125 billion. A lot of founders say they want to be the ‘AirBnB of X’ or ‘the Uber of Y’ to convince themselves, and investors, that their idea is the next big thing. That’s not what this is. This is 4.5 years of obsessing about KYB (Know Your Business) after over a decade in eCommerce—a decade in which Shopify became the default choice for eCommerce.

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In this article, I’ll explore how Shopify’s trajectory from small business enabler to enterprise mainstay paves the way for a similar transformation in KYB. I’ll look at the evolution of the KYB market amid rising regulatory pressure, and how a platform like Detected is positioning itself to become the trusted, all-in-one KYB solution—essentially, the ‘Shopify of KYB’.

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For those who know me, this analogy makes perfect sense. Before diving deep into KYB, Pete (CTO & Co-Founder) and I had our careers almost entirely in eCommerce. We’d seen firsthand how online selling evolved from a fragmented, frustrating process into an industry dominated by platforms that simplified everything. Shopify played a massive role in that transformation, revolutionising the way businesses big and small could sell online.

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How Shopify Became the Default

But how did Shopify actually become the go-to platform for eCommerce at every level of the market? In the early days, Shopify was dismissed by large retailers who felt it was only for small merchants in need of a basic online store. We remember sitting in the HQs of retailers throughout Europe in the early/mid 2010s who simply wouldn’t consider Shopify a credible platform.

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Back then, the established eCommerce giants were rolling out massive, complicated platforms—some even swallowing up smaller competitors just to add more features. Shopify took a different road. It doubled down on a user-friendly interface, straightforward scalability, and an ever-expanding app ecosystem. Suddenly, you didn’t need an army of developers or a Fortune 500 budget to launch an online store that could still handle big-brand demands. That approach changed everything.

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1. Ease of Use and Accessibility

Shopify offered a clean, user-friendly interface that made it accessible for non-technical founders who just wanted to sell online. Suddenly, you didn’t need to be a developer or spend huge budgets on custom web development.

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2. Ecosystem and Integrations

From day one, Shopify leaned into partnerships and integrations. With an open API and a robust app store, businesses could find virtually any feature they needed—everything from dropshipping tools to advanced analytics.

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3. Scalability and Credibility

As more merchants succeeded on Shopify, bigger brands took notice. Over time, Shopify demonstrated it could support enterprise-level traffic, customer volume, and data demands. Once it proved its reliability—backed by robust security, payment processing, and global infrastructure—it earned its place in the boardrooms of major retailers.

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4. Customer-Centric Innovation

Shopify didn’t just bolt on features; they iterated and innovated with a relentless focus on merchant success. This approach extended to educational resources, webinars, and a supportive community, helping it break into the mainstream.

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The result? Shopify isn’t just for entrepreneurs in their bedrooms anymore—it’s powering enterprise giants. From fashion labels to media companies, a who’s who of major brands (Gymshark, Kraft Heinz, Kylie Cosmetics, RedBull, Netflix, BBC, and more) run their online stores on Shopify. This evolution—from a scrappy SMB tool to an enterprise default—holds a valuable lesson for KYB and Compliance more broadly..

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Picture this: a compliance team onboarding a new business client in 2025. Instead of a sleek, unified system, they’re likely wrestling with dozens of fragmented KYB processes: pulling data from multiple databases, emailing spreadsheets, and chasing documents across departments. If eCommerce had its all-in-one revolution, the obvious question is: why hasn’t KYB?

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The Evolving KYB Landscape: Fragmentation, Friction, and Rising Regulatory Pressures

Today’s KYB landscape is riddled with inefficiencies, much like eCommerce was before Shopify arrived. The process of verifying businesses remains deeply fragmented, relying on disconnected data sources, manual workflows, and archaic onboarding procedures. For compliance teams, KYB is a headache that requires pulling information from multiple registries, requesting documents manually, and waiting weeks—sometimes months—for verification to be completed. The impact? Slow onboarding, frustrated customers, and revenue left on the table.

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At its core, KYB was never designed to be this complicated, much like selling products online. The principle is simple: verify that a business is real, understand its ownership structure, and assess potential risks. Yet, despite the rapid advancement of automation and AI, many organisations still operate with a compliance infrastructure that feels stuck in 1999. The irony is staggering—we have AI instantly generating hyper-realistic videos, self-landing rockets, and fully autonomous trading systems, yet banks, fintechs, marketplaces and many more are still using spreadsheets to confirm a business address. The inefficiency isn’t just frustrating; it’s financially detrimental.

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Part of the issue lies in perception. Many companies still see KYB as a regulatory hurdle, a necessary evil rather than a competitive advantage so it just doesn't get the focus it deserves. This mindset has led to a “patchwork approach,” where businesses stitch together multiple data providers, risk-scoring tools, and document verification services in an attempt to comply with regulations. The result? Higher costs, longer processing times, and a poor user experience for the businesses being onboarded. These impacts are rarely even measured, let alone fixed.

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Regulatory pressure is also accelerating the need for change. The introduction of the Corporate Transparency Act in the U.S. has forced businesses to rethink how they collect and verify beneficial ownership information. Similarly, the EU’s Digital Services Act mandates stricter controls on business verification for online platforms. And with the establishment of the AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Authority) in Europe, enforcement will only become stricter. Companies that fail to modernise their KYB processes will not only face regulatory scrutiny but also risk losing customers to more agile competitors who offer seamless, instant onboarding.

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The industry is at a tipping point. Just as Shopify proved that eCommerce could be simplified, a new wave of compliance solutions is emerging to streamline KYB. Among them, Detected stands out as the platform that can do for KYB what Shopify did for eCommerce—create an all-in-one solution that eliminates friction, reduces costs, and makes KYB an asset rather than a burden.

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The All-in-One Solution: Detected’s Path to Becoming the “Shopify of KYB”

If KYB is the starting point, compliance is the destination. Detected is building more than just a KYB tool—it’s developing the infrastructure that businesses will rely on to navigate the entire compliance lifecycle. We are simply doing the thing that is most difficult first. Much like Shopify didn’t stop at providing a first-of-its-kind eCommerce platform plus an app marketplace, Detected isn’t stopping at KYB. The vision is far bigger: today, we are a unified KYB platform that integrates onboarding, monitoring, risk assessment, and fraud prevention into a single, scalable solution—but there are other components that in time will be included to ensure Detected is the only platform a business needs for all things compliance.

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Part of what makes Detected different is its fully integrated approach. Instead of requiring compliance teams to jump between different systems, Detected consolidates everything into one seamless experience. I won’t list out all of the features here, but from the initial front-end application process (UI) all the way through to ongoing monitoring—everything is pulled into a single platform.

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And just as Shopify scaled to accommodate the needs of large enterprises, Detected is designed to grow with its customers. Whether it’s a fast-scaling fintech looking for rapid onboarding capabilities or a multinational bank needing deep-dive risk assessments across multiple jurisdictions, Detected provides a compliance ecosystem that adapts to the complexity of the business. We have customers with 100 staff and customers with 10,000+; the beauty of an all-in-one platform of this standard is that it caters to both, especially today when the focus is on KYB.

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The true power of Detected lies in its ability to turn compliance into an advantage. Instead of being a bottleneck, it becomes an enabler. Faster onboarding means reduced churn. Better risk assessment means fewer fraudulent transactions. Automated compliance means lower operational costs. And in a world where regulatory demands are increasing, businesses that invest in seamless compliance solutions will outpace those that don’t.

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The opportunity is clear. Shopify reshaped eCommerce by creating an all-in-one platform that became the default for businesses of all sizes. Detected is poised to do the same for KYB—and eventually reshape Compliance as a whole.

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Ok, calm down

Big ambition has never been something I’ve lacked, but I’m aware of how difficult it will be to make Detected the ‘Shopify for KYB’, especially because we’re doing this in a lean way. To run the company in 2025, we will spend what businesses we are consistently beating in large-scale RFPs are spending in a month—the power of focus, I suppose.

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When Pete and I started this business, we had ZERO knowledge of compliance. We, and the brilliant team we’ve been lucky enough to have join us, have simply asked the industry what it needs, built it and then raised the game to set new standards. Same as Daniel, Tobias and Scott who started Shopify without any eCommerce experience I suppose and they've done alright...

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