Since 2020 the money-laundering rules apply to the art trade directly: on any sale of €10,000 or more — a single work or a linked series — you must verify the buyer and keep the record. ArtGuard makes it a two-minute formality your collector does on their own phone, screens them against that day's sanctions and PEP lists, and files the evidence HMRC asks for. £39 a month, the whole gallery on one account.
Most identity tools are built for banks and feel like it — forms, portals, a photocopier behind the desk. We built the engine ourselves: the sanctions and PEP lists are published by HM Treasury (OFSI), the FCDO, OFAC and the UN — we ingest them daily into our own screening infrastructure, and the biometric face-match runs on our own servers. It already verifies real buyers every day. So a check is one link, the collector's phone, and a tidy evidence file — and it costs you a flat rate, not a per-check meter.
Add the buyer's name and mobile — they get a secure link that opens on any phone, from the gallery. No app to install, no forms at the desk.
The buyer lays their passport against the phone — it reads the chip inside — and takes a short selfie. Under two minutes, done wherever they are.
Biometric match between chip and selfie, plus sanctions & PEP screening against that day's lists. Anything doubtful is flagged for your review — never silently cleared.
A dated evidence file per buyer: the identity result, the screening outcome and the list versions used. It stays on your account under a five-year lock.
No photocopier behind the desk, nothing loose for the gallery to store — the collector gets back to the picture, and you keep the record.
Passport-chip read with a server-side face match against a live selfie — stronger evidence than a database ping, and far kinder at the desk than asking for a photocopy. You hold the document read and the match.
Every buyer screened against the OFSI consolidated list, FCDO, OFAC and UN lists as they stood that day — with the list versions recorded in the evidence, and doubtful matches escalated for your review.
Re-screen a returning collector on a schedule you set. Every run is logged whether or not anything changed, and a new sanctions match alerts you the same morning.
A running file per buyer, and a dated pack you can hand to an HMRC inspector: what was checked, against which lists, with what result — under a five-year retention lock.
Buying through a company or a trust? Company screening with beneficial-ownership capture, so the people behind the entity get screened too.
Everyone on the floor on one account, one price. No per-user charges — who runs the check should never be a licensing decision.
You've spent years earning a collector's trust, and now — at the moment of the sale — you're supposed to ask them for a passport. It can feel like an accusation, so it gets skipped, and the file stays empty, and the risk quietly becomes yours. The fix is mostly language, and then a tool that keeps the promise the language makes.
Make the check about the level of the purchase, not the person — a mark of the league they're buying in, the same league as the auction rooms. Nobody is offended by being treated as a serious collector.
"Before we complete there's a two-minute formality — the rules ask us to verify identity on purchases at this level, exactly as the auction houses do. I'll send a link to your phone; you tap your passport on it and you're done."
"As with all sales at this level, completion includes a two-minute identity verification — link to follow separately."
The finance-shaped per-check tools charge £5–£40 a check, plus platform fees, plus per-seat licences. For a gallery that only crosses the €10,000 line now and then, that's a meter you have to think about before every sale.
ArtGuard Verify is £39 a month + VAT with 15 checks included — so you never have to weigh whether a particular sale is "worth" a check. Past 15, checks are £2.50 + VAT each; we never block one mid-sale, the counter simply keeps honest score.
Your first month is free — all 15 checks, no card. Run one on yourself, tap your own passport, and see the evidence file you'd be keeping. If it isn't obviously better than what you do today, close the account in one click.
ArtGuard supports your judgement; it never replaces it. The decision to complete a sale — including any enhanced checks, and anything a screening result flags for review — remains yours. We give you the identity evidence, the screening result and the audit trail; the commercial call is the gallery's.
Our verification is document + biometric + screening. We read the buyer's identity document, biometrically match it to a live selfie, and screen against the sanctions and PEP lists. We do not run a source-of-funds workflow — where your money's come from is a judgement for the dealer, and we won't pretend a check settles it.
We are not your AML supervisor. ArtGuard is a tool, not a regulator: registering with HMRC for AML supervision, and your firm-wide risk assessment and policies, remain your responsibility. The screening lists we use are the official published UK, US and UN lists, refreshed daily, and every check records which versions it ran against.
Set-up takes a few minutes — your gallery's details are usually already in our register data. Send your first verification link today and see the evidence file it produces.
Start free — 15 checks on us