This document provides an overview of the Identity Verification Template setup in the Plaid Dashboard. It explains the different types of verification checks available, how they can be combined, and how to configure them to suit your business needs. Additionally, it covers the risk scoring system that helps assess the verification outcomes. This guide is designed to help you effectively implement and customize identity verification workflows using Plaid.
🛠️ Identity Verification Template Setup
Plaid offers a variety of verification checks to choose from. You can combine multiple verification checks within a single Identity Verification template via the Workflow Management editor, and even run certain checks conditionally, such as only running a particular verification if another verification fails, or running different checks based on your user's country of origin.
For a more in-depth view of Identity Verification checks, including details on what each check verifies and how to handle failures, see Identity Verification Manual. After running your selected checks, Identity Verification will also display a set of granular risk scores (email risk, phone risk, etc.) in the Dashboard for each session, along with an overall risk score, helping you to understand which factors contributed to the session passing or failing and which sessions have been identified as the highest risk.
When configuring your checks, it is typically recommended to start with the default templates and risk rules, then fine-tune them as needed based on your results.
🔍 Data Source Verification
Data Source Verification (formerly known as Lightning Verification) verifies a user's name, address, date of birth, phone number, and ID number (such as SSN) against available records. These records are sourced from high-quality, trusted databases such as voter and driver registration records, property records, and credit bureau records. You can configure the level of matching required for each field in your template’s Identity Rules. The results of this check will be summarized in the kyc_check object in the API.
📄 Document Verification
Document Verification prompts the user to upload an image of an identity document. Plaid will use anti-fraud checks to verify that the document appears to be legitimate and is unexpired. Plaid will also verify the date of birth and name on the document against the data provided by the user (other fields that may be present on the document, such as address or national ID number, will not be verified). You can review and configure which document types are supported for each country.
Document Verification can be used as a potential fallback for Data Source Verification (e.g. for verifying thin file customers). It can also be used as a primary method of verification, especially in countries where Data Source Verification is not supported.
🤳 Selfie Check
When Selfie Check is enabled, the user will be asked to take a selfie on their mobile device as part of the verification process. Plaid will verify that the selfie submitted is a live video of a real human. If Document Verification is enabled, Selfie Check will also verify that the selfie matches the photo in the document.
If the user is on a non-mobile device, Plaid will display a QR code that they can use to perform the Selfie Check on mobile. They will resume the computer-based flow once the Selfie Check is complete. This handoff process is automatic and does not require any integration work on your part.
📱 SMS Verification
SMS Verification will verify a user's phone number by asking them to enter a code sent via SMS.
🛡️ AML Screening
If you're also using Monitor, AML Screening allows you to screen a user against government watchlists during an IDV session by incorporating one of your Monitor screening programs into an IDV template.
⚠️ Risk Check
Plaid automatically runs anti-fraud checks in the background of a user’s verification session and summarizes the results into several categories. The data collected in each category is analyzed and assigned a risk level. Whether the overall risk check passes or fails is determined by the template’s Risk Rules, which you can configure. For more details on the risk check process, see Anti-fraud monitoring.