This guide is for individuals going through a Persona-powered identity verification flow. While we’ve included helpful tips, the verification was set up by the business, service, or organization that asked you to verify. They use Persona as a tool, and they ultimately decide what’s required and can assist with your specific situation, if you’re having trouble.
What this step was doing
Some verification flows ask you to type in details such as your full name, your date of birth, or your address, and then check them against records held by other organisations. Depending on the country, those records come from things like electoral rolls, credit files, postal data, or utility records.
A message saying your details could not be confirmed means that check did not come back the way the business needed it to. It is not a statement that you gave false information, and it is not an accusation.
Why this happens to people who did nothing wrong
The records being checked are other organisations’ records, and they are often out of date or incomplete. These are the common, entirely innocent reasons:
- You moved recently. Address records lag by months, sometimes longer.
- Your name changed, through marriage, divorce, or any other reason, and not everywhere has caught up. See My legal name changed.
- You are new to the country, or new to adulthood, so there is very little on file about you yet.
- You have never had credit in your own name, which in some countries is the main thing these records are built from.
- Your name is written differently in different places, for example with or without a middle name, a hyphen, or an accent. See My ID has non-Latin characters.
- You live somewhere the records handle badly, such as a new build, a shared address, or a rural address without a standard format.
None of that is your fault, and none of it is fixable by trying harder.
What is worth checking on your side
Before you contact anyone, look at what you typed. Small differences matter more here than anywhere else in the flow.
- Use your full legal name, exactly as it appears on your official documents, not a shortened or preferred version.
- Check the date of birth format. Day and month get swapped constantly, and it is easy to miss.
- Give your current address, unless the screen specifically asked for a previous one.
- Look for typos in numbers, especially a national ID or postcode.
- Write the address the way the post office would, not the way you would say it out loud.
If you spot something, correct it and submit again if the flow allows it.
When it is not something you can fix
If your details are right and the check still does not confirm them, stop retrying. Nothing changes on your side, and repeated attempts can run you into the limit the business set. See I see a “Too many attempts” message.
Contact the business that asked you to verify instead. Tell them your details are correct, say which step it happened on, and mention anything that would explain a thin or stale record, such as a recent move or a recent name change. They decide what happens next, and they usually have another route, such as review by a person or a different document.
Persona cannot look up your result or overrule the check. See What do I do if verification fails?.