Document Verification with QR Code Extraction

Overview

Document AI helps businesses process supplemental documents, verify data, and reduce fraud in global KYB and KYC workflows. QR code extraction allows you to verify business documents by retrieving data directly from official government websites linked within a document.

This feature improves verification accuracy and fraud resistance by referencing authoritative, real-time data sources.

When a user uploads a document containing a QR code, Persona can automatically:

• Detect and decode the QR code
• Visit the linked government website
• Capture a screenshot of the site
• Extract configured data fields from the site

This enables you to verify whether information from the official government source matches the information provided in the document.

How it works

The QR code extraction pipeline follows these steps:

1. Detect & Decode: Persona scans the uploaded document (first two pages) for QR codes.
2. Validate & Follow Link: If a QR code is found, the system decodes the URL and checks it against a pre-approved list of government domains (the "allowlist").
3. Fetch & Parse Content: Persona accesses the linked website and parses the visible text from the page's HTML.
4. Extract Data: The system runs configured Extractions on the parsed website text to pull out specific data fields.
5. Surface evidence in review: show both the original document and the linked website content side-by-side.
6. Fallback to Document: If any step in the QR code pipeline fails (e.g., no QR code is detected, the website is unavailable, or the process times out), it is configurable to have the system gracefully fall back to running Extractions on the text of the uploaded document itself.

Configuration

You can enable QR code extraction for both new and existing Document Verification Templates. The primary configuration is setting the data source for an Extraction.

Setting the Extraction Source

For any given Extraction within a Document Verification Template, you can define where Persona should attempt to pull the data from.

To configure the source for an Extraction:

1. Navigate to Verifications > Templates.
2. Select the Document Verification Template you wish to edit.
3. In the Configuration tab, find or create the Extraction you want to configure.
4. In the Extraction settings, locate the Applies to Sources dropdown menu.
5. Select one of the following options:
   • Document only (Default): Extracts data only from the text of the uploaded document. The QR code pipeline is not triggered.
   • QR code-linked website, with Document fallback: The system will first attempt the QR code pipeline. If it fails, it will fall back to extracting data from the document. This is the recommended setting for most use cases.
   • QR code-linked website only: Extracts data only from the linked government website. If the QR pipeline fails, the Extraction will return no value.

Out-of-the-Box QR-Supported Document Types

To simplify setup, Persona offers pre-configured Document Types that support QR code extraction. When you use one of these, the domain allowlist is automatically configured.

QR-supported Document Types are marked with a QR code icon in the Template editor.

Initial supported types:

• Mexican Constancia de Situacion Fiscal (Cédula de Identificación Fiscal)

Enabling QR code verification for additional document types

To ensure security, Persona only follows QR code URLs that resolve to approved domains. For Persona’s out-of-the-box document types that support QR codes, this allowlist is already configured with known government domains.

If you need to enable QR code verification for additional document types, this requires configuration by the Persona team. If you’d like to enable QR code verification for a new document type reach out to your Persona account team to request the configuration.

Reviewing Verifications with QR Code Data

In the Persona Dashboard, Verifications that used the QR code pipeline will display additional information and evidence for manual review.

Verification Details

• Evidence Thumbnails: The Verification evidence will show a thumbnail of the original document and a second thumbnail of the content from the QR code-linked website.
• Extractions Source: An additional Source column will appear in the Extractions table, indicating whether the data was sourced from the "Document" or "QR Linked Website".
• QR Code Check: A new "QR Code" will appear in the list of Verification Checks, indicating whether a QR code was successfully detected.

Disclaimer

Persona provides tools to help companies address identity challenges, but it is up to each business to determine its risk tolerance and goals. The QR code extraction feature relies on the availability and accuracy of third-party government websites.