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 just happened
You tapped a link or scanned a code, a card slid up from the bottom of the screen, and the verification started as an app rather than as a web page.
That is an App Clip, which is an Apple feature. It is a small, temporary piece of an app that runs immediately without going to the App Store. Some businesses choose this because a native camera usually takes a better photo of a document than a camera inside a browser does, and fewer people get stuck on browser permission problems.
What it means for you
- Nothing is installed. You are not downloading an app, and there is no new icon on your home screen afterwards.
- It is temporary. iOS clears an App Clip on its own once you stop using it.
- It is published by Persona. The name shown on the card is the same company running the verification the business sent you to.
- It needs a recent iPhone. On older versions of iOS the card does not appear and the same link opens in your browser instead. Both routes reach the same verification.
If it will not open
- Tap the card promptly. If you leave it, it slides away, and you can bring it back by opening the link again.
- Check your connection. The App Clip is fetched over the network at the moment you tap it, so a weak signal shows a card that spins and never starts.
- Free up storage if your phone is nearly full.
- Restart your phone, then open the link again.
- Open the link in Safari instead. If the App Clip refuses to start, ask the business that asked you to verify to send the link again and, if your device offers the choice, open it as an ordinary web page.
If you tapped the wrong answer on a permission prompt
The App Clip asks for the camera, and in some verification flows the microphone, through the standard iOS prompt. If you tapped Don’t Allow, the step cannot run.
An App Clip is not a permanently installed app, so you may not find it in your Settings app the way you would a normal one. The reliable route is to start over rather than to hunt for the setting:
- Close the App Clip using the X or by swiping it away.
- Open the original link again from the message or email the business sent you.
- Choose Allow when the camera prompt appears this time.
- If the prompt no longer appears at all, restart the phone and open the link once more.
Is this legitimate?
It is reasonable to be wary of anything that opens itself on your phone. Two things to check: the card names Persona, and you got there from a link the business you are dealing with sent you, rather than from a message that arrived out of the blue.
If you did not expect this request, do not continue. See Is this verification request real?.