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ID verification best practices & FAQs

Updated

Rental housing providers use Intellirent to conduct multiple identity verification checks online. A verified identity document helps your housing provider quickly move through the application screening process by eliminating bad actors and confirming the validity of your government issued ID.

As a potential renter, you will be asked to validate your government issued identity document by completing a verification session. 

IN THIS ARTICLE

 

Verification session

A potential renter will be asked to upload a valid government issued identity document and take a selfie to match. Types of IDs allowed are, drivers license, passport or national (or state) ID.

Before starting the verification process, here’s what you need:

  1. A physical and valid government-issued ID document. Not a photocopy or a picture of an ID document. Ensure that the ID document is not expired.
  2. Device with a camera, if possible, use a mobile device. Cameras on mobile devices typically take higher-quality photos than a webcam.

Best practices

The quality of the images captured affects success rates dramatically. Below are a few best practices to help ensure that your verification passes:

  • Capture a clear image. Make sure that the images aren’t too dark or bright, and do NOT have a glare. Hold steady and allow your camera to focus to avoid blurry photos.
  • Capture the full document. Make sure all corner, top, bottom and sides of the document are clearly visible. Ideally you can lay it flat to take the photo. Do NOT block any part of the document!
  • Don’t block any part of your face. Remove sunglasses, masks, or other accessories.
  • Find a location with ambient lighting. Avoid spaces with strong overhead lights that cast a shadow on your face or ID document. Avoid sitting directly in front of a bright light which can wash out your face and add a glare to your ID document.

Step 1: Document check

A renter will be asked to upload images of the front and back of a valid government-issued photo ID. Automated identity verification technology will looks for patterns to help determine if an ID document is real or fake. Document details like name, date of birth, and government ID number will be collected and checked against a global set of databases. 

Step 2: Selfie check

After uploading document images the system will capture photos of a renter's face and reviews them against the document to confirm that the photo ID belongs to the person in the document. Identity verification technology uses distinctive physiological characteristics known as biometric identifiers to match the photos in the selfie with the photo on the ID document. 

 

Verification results

Identity document results will be immediately available for you. Session results, and the identity document image will also be available to the housing provider. Selfie images are not shared. 

After completing a verification session, the renter will continue to the Personal Information section of the application. Some fields such as full name, DOB, Your Address and Government Issued ID will be pre-populated. 

Verified

When both the identity document and the selfie check are successful, the verification session result will be VERIFIED. Personal Information fields are pre-populated. The pre-populated Government Issued ID details and image cannot be edited. 

Unverified

If either the document image or the selfie image cannot be successfully obtained, the verification session result will be UNVERIFIED. Personal Information fields may be pre-populated. 

If there are remaining attempts to successfully complete the verification session, the Government Issued ID details and image can be edited. Click edit on the image file to try again. 

When there are no more remaining attempts, the ID details and image can no longer be edited. 

Consent declined

When declining consent to verify your identity document, the government issued ID may be considered UNVERIFIED. 

Personal Information fields will not be pre-populated. A renter with active access to their account can re-attempt the verification session. 

NOTE: After manually entering Personal Information fields, if re-attempting and completing a verification session some Personal Information fields may be edited with returned results. 

Not analyzed

A verification session can only be performed on one document. After completing the verification session if an additional ID is uploaded, the verification session will not be performed for the additional ID, therefore the result for the additional attached documents will be NOT ANALYZED.

 

Verification data

A renter will give consent to share the rental application data with their desired housing provider. The government issued ID document image and verification session results are included in the renter's application file. The selfie check image is not included in results provided to the housing provider.   

Intellirent uses Stripe Identity for verification session technology. Stripe asks for a renter's consent before collecting document and selfie images. Stripe collects identifying information about you and the devices that connect to its services, which includes the use of cookies. Stripe uses this information to operate and improve the services it provides to us, including for fraud detection, authentication, and analytics. They’ll only use your verification data in accordance with the permissions you grant before starting the verification process, and based on their Privacy Policy. 

Both Intellirent and Stripe have access to the information that you submit through the verification flow. Intellirent may rely on Stripe to help store verification data. Stripe uses access controls and security standards that are at least as stringent as those used to handle their own KYC and payments compliance data. Learn more about how Stripe handles and stores your data.

 

 

 

Still need help? Contact our live support team. 

 

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