Using AAMVA Verification

Overview

AAMVA Verification works well alongside Government ID Verification and Selfie Verification.

In this guide, learn:

• Why AAMVA Verification works well with these other Verification types
• Common ways to set up AAMVA Verification
• Recommendations for required Verification checks

Using AAMVA with Government ID and Selfie Verifications

AAMVA Verification pairs well with Government ID and Selfie Verifications.

Together, Government ID and Selfie Verifications can check that the photo on a user’s license matches their face, which is something AAMVA Verification can’t do.

On the other hand, adding AAMVA Verification to a Government ID Verification helps you gain confidence that a user’s driver’s license is legitimate. For example, AAMVA Verification can catch licenses that have been tampered in a way that’s hard to detect based on how it looks.

Common ways to set up AAMVA Verification

Here are three ways AAMVA Verification is commonly set up.

Inquiry with only AAMVA Verification

AAMVA Verification is commonly used as a tool for a manual review team to request more information about a submitted driver’s license, as needed.

To implement this tool, set up an Inquiry Template that contains just the AAMVA Verification. A member of your review team can then create an Inquiry one-off using this template. They can either send the Inquiry to a user, or fill the Inquiry out themselves on behalf of the user, using information the user previously submitted (for example, an image of their license provided via a Government ID Verification).

Whoever completes the Inquiry will be asked to input information from the driver’s license into a form.

After Government ID Verification—in Inquiry

Another common way to use AAMVA Verification is to ask users to complete it only if they fail certain Verification checks in a Government ID Verification. You can ask users to go through AAMVA Verification within the same Inquiry.

If you choose to do this, you can make the experience easy on your users even though you’re asking for more information. You can prefill the form that users must fill in for AAMVA Verification, using details collected about their driver’s license in the Government ID Verification. Users can double check and further edit the details before they submit.

After Government ID Verification—in Workflow

A third common way to use AAMVA Verification is to run it via a Workflow, if a user completes an Inquiry and fails specific Verification checks for Government ID Verification. AAMVA Verification is run after the user is done with the Inquiry, using the information collected about their driver’s license via the Government ID Verification in the Inquiry.

This is the option we recommend, if you want more than a one-off tool for your manual review team.

There are several benefits to this setup:

• User experience: It does not require your users to go through a separate Verification.
• Resilience: It builds resilience into your AAMVA Verification. The underlying AAMVA service that provides access to the DMV database sometimes becomes unavailable. By running AAMVA Verification in a Workflow, the downtime does not impact the user experience in your Inquiry, and you can handle the downtime by implementing retry logic in the Workflow.

Here are some best practices for implementing this setup:

• Require barcode: This setup tends to produce good results only if you ask users to upload the barcode of the driver’s license in the Government ID Verification.
• Require mobile device: We recommend that you require users to use a mobile device to scan the barcode. This helps users take the clearest photo of the barcode. Mobile devices typically have higher-quality cameras, and can be more easily moved to an area with good lighting.

Note that some users have difficulty capturing barcodes, so requiring barcodes may lead some users to drop off from your Inquiry. You may want to monitor your Inquiry completion rates. You can use Inquiry Analytics to help you.

Recommendations for required Verification checks

Deciding which Verification checks to require is an important part of setting up any type of Verification.

For AAMVA Verification, what typically works well is to:

• Require Verification checks that ensure that the name, birthdate, and ID number match what’s in the DMV database.
• Enable other checks, but make them non-required. Use them as informational inputs that can help you form a better picture of a specific user.