What are Verification Checks?

Verification is the process of determining whether the information that an individual provides about their identity is valid and true. At Persona, we offer many different types of verification including Government ID Verification, Selfie Verification, Database Verification, and more.

Each verification consists of a series of verification checks that we perform on information automatically in real time. Verification Checks are probabilistic. No single check provides a silver bullet to guarantee whether an individual is who they claim to be.

Our platform allows you to configure verifications checks as you see fit, creating a bespoke threshold that determines what checks will cause a user to pass or fail the identity verification process.

Unfortunately, within this video we won’t be able to cover each verification check across all verification types. Instead, we want to use this lesson to help you understand how verification checks work broadly in Persona, and highlight some of the customizability available to you.

So I’ve just completed an Inquiry Flow that included three different Verifications: Government ID, Database, and Selfie. We’re starting off within the Inquiry Details View for my completed Inquiry.

Let’s move over to the Verifications tab where we can see what’s happening under the hood.

On this tab, there’s a collapsible section for each Verification attempt run during the flow. So in this instance, we’ve got four expandable sections – two attempts for Government ID verification, and then one attempt for Database and Selfie respectively.

Expanding the section for any attempt gives us a lot more detail into the attempt. As you can see, there’s a portion dedicated for the photos collected during the flow and any extractions performed by Persona. Further down is where you’ll find the verification checks run during this attempt.

There’s a bunch of information within this table, so let’s break down the elements. In the left column, you’ll find the name of each check and a tooltip briefly describing what the check does.

The middle column provides a rough categorization for the check. We’ll classify each check as User Action Required, meaning that failures tend to be more closely associated with user error, or Fraud, meaning that failures tend to be more closely associated with bad actors. Please note that this binary classification is not meant to be definitive. The reality behind why any given check may fail is far more complex.

The right column indicates whether the check was set as Required or Not Required for the underlying template. For context, Checks can be required – meaning that upon failure, the user must re-attempt the verification, or not required – in which case, the check will still run, but will not dictate whether a user can proceed.

In this instance, we’ve got seven required checks listed at the top of this table, followed by a number of non-required checks which were still run automatically. In this user’s first attempt at Government ID verification, three different verification checks failed – Expiration, Barcode, and Repeat. The Expiration check is set as Required; clicking the arrow to expand this row provides more details. The ID provided in this photo expired in September of 2023.

Let’s take a closer look at the two non-required checks that failed.

The barcode check failed because Persona was unable to detect the back of an ID. For this flow, we didn’t prompt the user to provide a back image, so this makes sense.

The Repeat check evaluates whether we’ve seen these ID details and portrait submitted for other accounts that exist within the Organization. Here, I’ve failed the Repeat check because in this Organization, I use this same ID for testing across multiple accounts. In a real world scenario, this might be a check that you want to set as Required. For example, if you care about limiting duplicate accounts, this check can help contribute towards that outcome.

Let’s briefly look at the Selfie verification results to showcase how different verifications have different types of checks. For this verification, we’ve run over ten checks to work in concert with the Government ID and verify the individual’s identity.

Here we can see another example of a check that failed – the Glasses check. If glasses are detected in the Selfie photos, this check will fail. Because the check was set to not required, the Selfie verification attempt still passed.

Before we wrap up this video, let’s briefly touch on check-specific configuration options. We’re now within the Inquiry Configurations Editor for the Inquiry Template.

As you’ve seen, each verification check evaluates different things. Beyond being able to set a check as required, some checks come with additional configurability. Let’s take a look at this age comparison check as a simple example.

Age comparison is commonly used as part of age verification use cases for our Government ID verification. Clicking the arrow expands the check configurations where we can set a default age requirement, or specify country by country age requirements.

If you’d like to explore more about our verification checks, check out our documentation available within the Persona dashboard. Click the question mark icon and select Verification Checks. Here you’ll find details on all available checks across our many different verification types.