Platforms with Custom accounts are required to provide Stripe with the necessary information about their users to meet “Know Your Customer” (KYC) regulations. As a Connect platform with Custom accounts, it’s your responsibility to collect the required information from your users and provide it to Stripe. We’ll then perform verification, asking for more information when needed.

The rest of this page goes through how platforms:

• Know when identity verification is needed
• Provide the necessary information to Stripe

You should also read our Identity Verification for Custom Accounts guide to learn about the verification flow options, how our API fields translate to both companies and individuals, and how to localize information requests.

Verification process

Before charges and payouts can be enabled for a connected account, Stripe needs a certain set of information. The specific needs vary depending on the:

• The country the connected account is in.
• The capabilities the connected account needs (only applicable to connected accounts in the U.S.).
• Whether the business entity is a company or an individual.

Platforms need to choose the proper onboarding flow for their business and users to meet the KYC requirements. Broadly speaking, this means providing all the requisite information upfront or incrementally. Either way, you’ll need to be set up to watch for and respond to requests from Stripe.

1. Establish a platform webhook URL in your webhook settings to watch for activity, especially events of the account.updated type. When using the Persons API, you should also watch for person.updated events.
2. Immediately after creating an account, check the Account object’s requirements[currently_due] attribute for any additional requirements. If additional information is required, obtain it from the user and update the connected account.
3. Continue watching for account.updated event notifications to see if the requirements hash changes, reaching out to your user for additional information as needed.

Note that when you provide additional information, you do not need to resubmit any previously verified details (e.g., if the dob has already been verified, it does not need to be provided again in subsequent updates).

Once an individual is verified, you cannot change that individual’s information. For verified companies, you’ll need to contact us to make changes (e.g., the name or EIN on file).

Determining if identity verification is needed

When you receive an account.updated webhook notification or fetch an account via the API, you receive an Account object. The Account object’s charges_enabled and payouts_enabled indicate whether the account can create charges and accept payouts.

The Account object has a requirements hash, representing the requirements needed to verify the account. The requirements hash has three arrays:

• eventually_due: Information in this array isn’t needed immediately, but it will be when certain thresholds are hit. All required information starts in this array.
• currently_due: Information in this array needs to be collected by the current_deadline and is a subset of eventually_due.
• past_due: Information in this array means the account is disabled because the required information wasn’t collected. past_due is a subset of currently_due.

The example below shows what the requirements hash might look like for an account that has some information that’s currently_due, and some information that’s eventually_due.

{
  "requirements": {
      "disabled_reason": null,
      "current_deadline": 1529085600,
      "past_due": [],
      "currently_due": [
          "external_account",
          "individual.dob.day",
          "individual.dob.month",
          "individual.dob.year",
          "individual.first_name",
          "individual.last_name",
          "tos_acceptance.date",
          "tos_acceptance.ip"
      ],
      "eventually_due": [
          "external_account",
          "individual.address.city",
          "individual.address.line1",
          "individual.address.postal_code",
          "individual.address.state",
          "individual.dob.day",
          "individual.dob.month",
          "individual.dob.year",
          "individual.first_name",
          "individual.last_name",
          "individual.ssn_last_4",
          "tos_acceptance.date",
          "tos_acceptance.ip"
      ],
  },
  ...
}

If requirements[currently_due] is not an empty array, requirements[current_deadline] might be set. This is a Unix timestamp identifying when the information is needed by. Usually, if we don’t receive the information by the current_deadline, payouts on the account are disabled. However, there can be other consequences for rarer situations. For example, if payouts are already disabled and our inquiries are not being responded to within a reasonable period of time, Stripe might also disable the ability to process charges. Unless fraud or other rare circumstances occur, Stripe always provides at least 3 days for the information to be provided before limiting account functionality.

Separately, the requirements[disabled_reason] property might also be set. This is a string describing the reason why this account is unable to make payouts or charges. The reason can fall into several categories.

Person information

During the verification process, information about the persons associated with an account needs to be collected. If you onboard:

• Only companies, use the Persons API to collect this information.
• Only individuals, you can use the Persons API or the individual hash on the Account object.
• A combination of individuals and companies, use the Persons API to collect this information (this way you collect information in the same way regardless of business type).

On both the Person object and the individual hash, there is a verification subhash that you can use to help manage identity verification (you should also watch for person.updated events so you know when there are changes):

{
  "verification": {
      "details": null,
      "details_code": null,
      "document": null,
      "document_back": null,
      "status": "unverified"
  },
  ...
}

You can look up the definition for each verification attribute on the Person object or the Account object, but there are two attributes worth noting now: status and details.

status indicates the current verification state for the person and has three possible values.

• pending: Stripe is currently trying to verify this entity.
• unverified: Stripe is not able to verify this entity right now, either because verification has failed or we do not have enough information to attempt verification.
• verified: Stripe has successfully verified this entity.

Note that an unverified status is not necessarily an urgent issue, but it does mean that Stripe might request more information soon.

The details attribute provides an explanation for the current status. This explanation can be shared with the user so they can understand why their account is in the current state.

Acceptable ID types by country

Below is a listing of documents that Stripe can accept as proof of identity for each country where Stripe supports the creation of Connect accounts.

Acceptable ID documents vary by country, however, a passport scan is always acceptable and is preferred. There are some forms of identification that require scans of both the front and back of the ID. For these, use the document_back parameter to provide the back of the document. Unless explicitly noted, only a scan of the front of the ID is required.

Handling ID verification problems

Many complications with the identity verification process involve the ID itself. To help you recognize and handle the most common problems, this table revisits the details_codes (on the verification subhash) and the likely resolutions for each error.

Handling identity verification

There are two ways to respond to an identity verification change. The first is to perform an update account call, correcting or adding information.

Secondarily, we may ask you to upload a color scan or photo of government-issued identification, such as a passport or driver’s license. This is a two-step process:

1. Upload the file to Stripe
2. Attach the file to the account

For security reasons, we do not accept copies of IDs over email.

Uploading a file

To upload a file, POST it as part of a multipart/form-data request to https://files.stripe.com/v1/files. The uploaded file needs to be a color image (smaller than 8,000px by 8,000px), in JPG or PNG format, and less than 5MB in size.

Pass the file in the file parameter and provide a purpose parameter with the value identity_document:

curl https://files.stripe.com/v1/files \
  -u {PLATFORM_SECRET_KEY}: \
  -H "Stripe-Account: {{CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID}}" \
  -F purpose=identity_document \
  -F file="@/path/to/a/file"

Stripe.api_key = PLATFORM_SECRET_KEY
Stripe::FileUpload.create(
  {
    purpose: 'identity_document',
    file: File.new('/path/to/a/file.jpg'),
  },
  {stripe_account: CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID}
)

stripe.api_key = PLATFORM_SECRET_KEY
with open("/path/to/a/file.jpg", "rb") as fp:
  stripe.FileUpload.create(
    purpose='identity_document',
    file=fp,
    stripe_account=CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID
  )

\Stripe\Stripe::setApiKey(PLATFORM_SECRET_KEY);
\Stripe\FileUpload::create(
  [
    'purpose' => 'identity_document',
    'file' => fopen('/path/to/a/file.jpg', 'r')
  ],
  ['stripe_account' => CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID]
);

Stripe.apiKey = PLATFORM_SECRET_KEY;
RequestOptions requestOptions = RequestOptions.builder().setStripeAccount(CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID).build();

Map<String, Object> fileUploadParams = new HashMap<String, Object>();
fileUploadParams.put("purpose", "identity_document");
fileUploadParams.put("file", new File("/path/to/a/file.jpg"));

FileUpload.create(fileUploadParams, requestOptions);

var fs = require('fs');
const stripe = require('stripe')(PLATFORM_SECRET_KEY);
stripe.fileUploads.create(
  {
    purpose: 'identity_document',
    file: {
      data: fs.readFileSync('/path/to/a/file.jpg'),
      name: 'file_name.jpg',
      type: 'application/octet-stream'
    }
  },
  {stripe_account: CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID}
);

fp, err := os.Open("/path/to/a/success.png")
params := &stripe.FileUploadParams{
  FileReader: fp,
  Filename: stripe.String("success.png"),
  Purpose: stripe.String(string(stripe.FileUploadPurposeIdentityDocument)),
}
params.SetStripeAccount("{{CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID}}")
file_upload, err := fileupload.New(params)

This request uploads the file and returns a token:

{
  "id": "file_5dtoJkOhAxrMWb",
  "created": 1403047735,
  "size": 4908
}

You may then use the token’s id value to attach the file to a connected account for identity verification.

Attaching the file

Once the file has been uploaded and a representative token returned, provide the file ID as the value of the document field in an update account call:

curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/accounts/{{CONNECTED_STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID}} \
  -u sk_test_4eC39HqLyjWDarjtT1zdp7dc: \
  -d verification[document][front]=file_5dtoJkOhAxrMWb

This step changes the verification[status] to pending. If additional persons needs to be verified, use the Persons API to update them.

Confirming ID verification

Assuming the photo of the ID passes Stripe’s checks, the status field changes to verified. You also receive an account.updated webhook notification upon completion of the verification process. Note that verification could take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple business days, depending on how readable the provided image is.

If the verification attempt fails, the status is unverified and the details field contains a message stating the cause. The message is safe to present to your user, such as “The image supplied was not readable”. In addition, the response contains a details_code value, such as scan_not_readable. Upon failure, requirements[currently_due] indicates that a new ID upload is required. If the deadline for verification is near, requirements[current_deadline] may also be populated with a date. Again, an account.updated webhook notification is sent as well.

Further reading

Now that you know how to perform identity verification through the API, you may want to read:

• Updating Accounts
• File Upload Guide
• Identity Verification for Custom Accounts
• Account Tokens
• Testing Custom Account Identity Verification
• Required Verification Information