Identity verification for benefit and grant applications

What benefit and grant programmes ask of identity checks

An agency that pays money to people has two fears at once: paying the wrong person and turning away the right one. The first is a fraud problem. The second is an access problem, and it is sharper than it looks, because the people who need a benefit most are often the people with the fewest documents. A remote identity check therefore has to be built with a way around it.

Time matters in the same way. A person who applies for a benefit is often waiting for money to meet a bill, and a check that adds days to the process is a cost borne by the applicant, not by the agency. The check should therefore be quick for the many who have a document and a phone, and the human route should be quick too for the few who do not. Both are easier to run when the agency sees every case in one place, with the same record.

• Verify the applicant, and the authorised representative when one applies for the household.
• Accept the documents that the programme accepts, without forcing one specific document.
• Find the same face applying more than once.
• Give a caseworker the session and the means to decide when the check does not settle a case.

The flow

1. Application. The applicant files the application in the agency's own system. The platform does not collect the application.
2. Links. Your backend creates a session for the applicant. When an authorised representative applies for a household, it creates a second session, and each person receives a one-time link, or scans a QR code to move from a desktop to a phone.
3. Questionnaire. Each person enters name, birth date, contacts and the custom fields the programme needs, before the KYC starts.
4. Document. Each person photographs a passport, national ID card, driver's licence or residence permit. The document is read and checked for fraud.
5. Selfie and liveness. The selfie is matched to the document portrait and active liveness confirms a live person.
6. Duplicates. Repeat-user search looks for the same face among earlier verified users, and your own person lists and blocklists are checked in the same flow.
7. Fallback. A case the check does not settle goes to a caseworker, who decides manually in the dashboard. A person with no document is handled by the caseworker with the agency's own methods, outside the platform.
8. Result. The agency's system reads the session status or receives a webhook. Eligibility is decided elsewhere.

Where this differs from the government page

The government services page describes the three tasks of resolving, validating and verifying an applicant, and the digital public services page describes the routes into a portal. This page starts from a rule about an actual programme. That rule puts three constraints on the flow that the other pages do not: two people may need to be verified for one household, no single document may be demanded, and the check must not be the only way to prove who someone is.

Modules used

• Document verification, face verification and liveness.
• Bulk link invitations and QR hand-off.
• Scenario editor for the documents and countries a programme accepts.
• Repeat-user search and blocklists, described on the face verification page.
• Dashboard for the caseworker's manual decision.
• REST API and webhooks.

Regulatory frame

One example from a primary text: section 273.2 of Title 7 of the United States Code of Federal Regulations, on office operations and application processing for SNAP. It is an example of how a programme rule treats identity. It describes one United States programme and no other.

• Section 273.2(f)(1)(vii) requires the State agency to verify the identity of the person making application, and, where an authorized representative applies on behalf of a household, the identity of both the authorized representative and the head of household.
• It provides that identity may be verified through readily available documentary evidence or, if that is unavailable, through a collateral contact, and gives as examples a driver's license, a work or school ID, an ID for health benefits or for another assistance or social services program, a voter registration card, wage stubs, or a birth certificate.
• It provides that any documents which reasonably establish the applicant's identity must be accepted, and that no requirement for a specific type of document, such as a birth certificate, may be imposed.
• Under section 273.2(i)(4)(i)(A), in the procedures for expediting service, the applicant's identity is in all cases verified through a collateral contact or readily available documentary evidence.
• Section 273.2(f) requires the State agency to give households at least 10 days to provide required verification.

This block describes the text, not our service. For information; not legal advice.

Sources

• Title 7 of the US Code of Federal Regulations, section 273.2, office operations and application processing, electronic Code of Federal Regulations, fetched 27 October 2026.

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