USA PATRIOT Act's Section 326 mandates customer identification at banks

President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act (Pub. L. 107-56) on October 26, 2001, six weeks after the September 11 attacks. Section 326 of the law required the Treasury Secretary to promulgate regulations compelling financial institutions to verify the identity of every person seeking to open an account — the "know your customer" mandate. For undocumented immigrants, the law accelerated scrutiny of account-opening documentation, creating ambiguity about whether ITINs satisfied identity verification standards. Though not explicitly targeting immigrants, Section 326 gave regulators and banks new authority to police account access based on identity documentation.