Stripe unveils Stripe Identity to securely verify identities of users

By Pavithra R

Stripe, a provider of economic infrastructure for the internet, has announced the launch of Stripe Identity, offers an easy way for internet businesses to securely verify the identities of users from over 30 countries.

As more and more economic activities happen online, the need for internet businesses to establish and maintain high levels of trust increases commensurately. Online businesses frequently need to verify the identities of their users to comply with age requirements or “Know Your Customer” (KYC) laws and to increase trust and safety by reducing fraud, preventing account takeovers, and stopping bad actors.

Stripe Identity makes identity verification effortless for business. According to Strie, it is the first self-serve tool of its kind, allowing any online business to begin verifying the identities of their users in just a few minutes, with no code required. Identity is built on the same infrastructure that powers Stripe’s own global onboarding compliance and risk management, meaning that the verification tooling Stripe originally built for itself is now available to Stripe’s users as well. The information collected is encrypted and sent directly to Stripe. This avpoids the need for individual business to manage sensitive, personal information on its own servers.

To prove their identity, users take a photo of their government ID and a live selfie, which Stripe’s advanced machine learning then matches to the ID. Businesses can also request that users key in additional information to be checked against third-party records.

“Verifications serve as a critical tool in any marketplace that’s powered by trust, especially for a platform like Peerspace that connects people to unique spaces for important meetings or milestone life events. The integration between Stripe Connect and Stripe Identity has allowed us to reduce fraud and give our users peace of mind, all while staying in a single, consistent experience that’s powered by Stripe,” said Matt Bendett, VP of Operations at Peerspace.

Early users of Stripe Identity include:

• Discord, which embedded identity verification as a feature to ensure trustworthiness.
• Peerspace, which added identity verification to their checks when onboarding users or merchants to reduce fraud.
• Shippo, whose fraud and risk teams augmented their own risk signals by asking high-risk users to verify their identity, without adding friction for good users.
• Security teams at a range of companies, using Stripe Identity to help prevent account takeovers.

Businesses using Stripe Identity benefit from Stripe’s global scale, advanced machine learning, highly effective fraud prevention, and carefully optimized purchase and onboarding flows.

“Businesses have been asking us for an easy and fast way to verify identities online. Stripe Identity offers them just that. Now, any internet business—from a five-person startup to a multinational enterprise—can begin securely verifying the identities of their users in a matter of minutes, not weeks or months,” said Rob Daly, Head of Engineering for Stripe Identity.