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Integration Guide: Government ID Verification via API

Solution overview

Pre-integration

  • Ensure you have the proper consent language in place to be able to support Government ID via API verification
  • Make sure your organization is set up with the requisite transaction and workflows!
  • Review the verification requirements
  • Think about any additional post-verification business logic you want to apply to your users in the Persona Workflow (report runs, age checks, etc)
  • Think about if there are any situations that would warrant a manual review of the user, using Persona Cases.

Reach out to your Persona team if you have questions related to any of these items!

Integration Steps

1. Create the Transaction

  • Please ensure you’re including the reference_id property under the attributes object: this will be the value you use to identify the user's Persona account
  • Use your Production API key to create Production transactions, and your Sandbox API key to create Sandbox transactions

Transaction fields

The minimum set of fields required for the verification is: id_front_photo, id_class, address_country_code, and transaction_type.

Whether or not additional fields are required will depend on your checks configuration. For example, if you're requiring the Inquiry Comparison check, you will want to prefill the inquiry with the user's information, so Persona can verify that it matches what's on the ID.

FieldTypeRequired?Description
name_firstStringfalseFirst Name
name_lastStringfalseLast name
name_middleStringfalseMiddle name
birthdateDatefalseBirthdate, in the format of YYYY-MM-DD
address_street_1StringfalseAddress street 1
address_street_2StringfalseAddress street 2
address_cityStringfalseAddress city
address_postal_codeStringfalseAddress postal code
address_subdivisionStringfalseAddress subdivision (state). Abides by ISO 3166-2 standards.
address_country_codeStringtrue2-letter country code. See Persona's list of supported countries in your dashboard.
id_classStringtrueMap the ID type to the Persona Identifier (docs)
id_front_photoFiletrueThe front photo of the ID
id_back_photoFilefalseThe back photo of the ID-- only required if your verification configuration requires it
phone_numberStringfalsePhone number
email_addressStringfalseEmail address
transaction_typeStringtrueID referencing a Transaction type.
debugStringfalseFor Sandbox verifications only: set as passed to pass the verification or failed to force-fail the verification. By default, the verification will pass.

Sample cURL commands

Because your request will contain files we recommend using a multipart/form-data style of request over application/json, though we have provided both as examples.

We've omitted some of the optional fields here for simplicity.

curl -X POST https://api.withpersona.com/api/v1/transactions \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <api_token>' \
--form 'data[attributes][transaction_type_id]=<your transaction id>' \
--form 'data[attributes][reference_id]=<your internal identifier for the user>' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][name_first]=Persona' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][name_last]=Test' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][birthdate]=1990-01-01' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][id_class]=dl' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][address_country_code]=US' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][id_front_photo][email protected]' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][id_back_photo][email protected]' \
--form 'data[attributes][fields][debug]=passed'
curl -X POST https://app.withpersona.com/api/v1/transactions \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <API KEY>" \
-d '{
  "data": {
    "attributes": {
      "transaction_type_id": "<your transaction ID>",
      "reference_id": "<your internal identifier for the user>",
      "fields": {
        "name_first": "Persona",
        "name_last": "Test",
        "birthdate": "1990-01-01",
        "debug": "passed",
        "id_front_photo": {
          "filename": "front.png",
          "data": "<base64 encoded string of the front GovID image>"
        },
        "id_back_photo": {
          "filename": "back.png",
          "data": "<base64 encoded string of the back GovID image>"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}'

2. Listen for the Transaction status

We recommend listening to the transaction.status-updated webhook (docs) to know when to proceed. You can alternatively make an API call to fetch the transaction (docs).

Transaction statuses

To view and edit these statuses, click “… > Custom Statuses” on your transaction type’s page

Status nameDescription
createdTransaction has been created.
approvedTransaction has been approved: you can proceed with the user.
declinedTransaction has been declined: verification unsuccessful or user otherwise declined.
needs_reviewTransaction is awaiting manual review.
erroredTransaction has errored.

Fallback inquiry orchestration

If your transaction flow includes a fallback to a Persona UI inquiry, you’ll utilize the following additional fields and statuses.

Additional fields

FieldTypeDescription
fallback_inquiry_idStringPersona will create and populate this field with the inquiry ID for you to surface to your user.

Additional statuses

Status nameDescription
pending_fallback_inquiryThe transaction will reach this status if a fallback inquiry has been created. On receipt of this status update, you will know that fallback_inquiry_id has been populated and your next action will be to surface that inquiry.