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.
First, check whether an upload is even the right move
Many verification flows ask you to photograph the document with the camera then and there, rather than send a file you already have. If the step is offering a camera and you are trying to attach a saved picture, use the camera instead. See Can I use a photo of my ID? for why a live capture is often required.
If the upload starts and then stalls
This is nearly always the connection:
- Stay put while it uploads. Walking between rooms, or in and out of signal, interrupts the transfer.
- Pick one network. A phone hopping between weak Wi-Fi and mobile data will keep failing. Turn Wi-Fi off and use mobile data, or the other way around.
- Get off busy public Wi-Fi. Hotel, cafe, and airport networks are often too slow to finish, and some office networks block parts of the flow.
- Turn off a VPN for the few minutes the flow takes.
- Do not lock the screen or switch apps while it is going. Let it finish in the foreground.
See My connection dropped during verification if it cuts out repeatedly.
If the file is rejected straight away
- Send an image, not a document. A JPEG or PNG photo works where a PDF, a scanned multi page file, or a screenshot of a screen often will not.
- Send one page per upload. If the step asks for the front, send only the front.
- Try a smaller file. A very large photo from a high resolution camera can be too big. Retaking it with your phone camera usually produces a file that sends.
- Do not crop, rotate, filter, or annotate it. Edited images cause problems, and an edited ID is likely to be rejected anyway. Send the photo as taken.
- Check it is actually the document. It is easy to pick the wrong image from a gallery. Open it first and look.
If nothing uploads at all
- Give the app or browser permission to reach your photos or camera, if you dismissed that prompt earlier.
- Free up storage on the phone. A full device can fail to prepare a file for sending.
- Reload the page, or close and reopen the app, and return through the original link.
- Try another device. See Device handoff: continue verification on another device.
If it uploads but the step does not move on
Then the file arrived and something about the image was not usable. That is a capture quality question rather than an upload one, and How to take a photo the scan can read is where to go next.