Identity verification of the seller in a property sale

What conveyancing firms and agents ask of identity checks

Registration fraud has a simple shape. A person who is not the owner presents themselves as the owner, with documents that look plausible, to an agent or a buyer who has never met the real owner. The sale goes ahead, money moves, and the fraud comes to light when the true owner finds a stranger in the register. The weak point is the first step, the moment when a stranger is accepted as the seller. Everything later in the file leans on it.

For the firm that handles the sale, that moment is also the hardest to do well. The seller is often remote: an owner who lives abroad, an executor, a landlord with a portfolio managed by someone else. A face-to-face meeting costs days. A video call helps, but a video call alone does not read the document, check it for tampering and compare the face on it with the face on screen. A structured check done before the file opens turns the first step from a conversation into a record.

• Send the seller a link as soon as the instruction arrives, and a separate link to the buyer.
• Read a passport, national ID card, driver's licence or residence permit, and check it for fraud.
• Compare the face on the document with a live face.
• Look for the same face under another name among earlier verified users.
• Keep the session log for the person who verifies the identity to look at.

The flow

1. Instruction. The seller instructs the firm or the agent, and your own system lists the parties whose identity is to be verified. This rule is yours.
2. Links. Your backend creates a session for each party and sends each a one-time link, or the party scans a QR code to move from a desktop to a phone.
3. Questionnaire. Each party enters name, birth date, contacts and the custom fields you need, such as the reference of the property, before the KYC starts.
4. Document. Each party 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. Other sales. 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. Title and authority. Whether the person identified is the registered proprietor, whether a name has changed, and whether an executor or attorney has authority to act are checks of the conveyancer, made against the register and the supporting documents. The platform identifies the person in front of the phone and does not read the register or any power of attorney.
8. Review. The person who verifies the identity looks at the result and the session log in the dashboard and decides a case that the check does not settle.
9. Route and forms. The conveyancer chooses the route for the registry's forms: verification in person, digital verification that meets HM Land Registry's digital identity standard (form ID1, section C), or an online video call with form ID5 and a screenshot of the person captured during the call. A platform session and a dashboard review are none of these routes and do not complete the forms. This page does not claim that the platform meets the digital identity standard.
10. Record. Retention is a setting you choose per scenario, and erasure on request is available through the API.

Where this differs from the real estate page

The real estate page is about the agent who brokers a deal and the anti-money-laundering rules that apply to that agent. This page is about the legal transfer of ownership and the register that records it. The person who matters most here is the seller, because a sale by an impostor is the failure that the system exists to prevent, and the party who relies on the check is the firm that lodges the application, not the agent who found the buyer.

Modules used

• Document verification, face verification and liveness.
• Repeat-user search and blocklists, described on the face verification page.
• Questionnaire and QR hand-off with one-time links.
• Dashboard for the session log and the review.
• REST API and webhooks.
• Data controls for retention and erasure.

Regulatory frame

One official text: HM Land Registry's practice guide 67, evidence of identity, as fetched on 27 October 2026. It applies to England and Wales and is aimed at conveyancers.

• The guide says it deals only with the evidence of identity that must be given to HM Land Registry, and not with identity checks required by law, such as under the money laundering legislation.
• It says that, to reduce the risk of registration fraud, HM Land Registry relies on the steps that conveyancers take, where appropriate, to verify the identity of their clients.
• It says that in most instances of fraud it is the purported disponor, rather than the applicant, who acts fraudulently, and that it is therefore essential that the identity of the disponor, and of certain others, is verified before transactions take place.
• For the transfer of a registered estate, its table lists the transferor and the transferee, and an attorney of either, as the persons for whom confirmation of identity or rule 17 identity evidence is required, subject to exceptions.
• It says that the identity of a person for whom form ID1 or ID2 is lodged must be verified by an individual who is a conveyancer, and that this can be any conveyancer.
• It says that form ID1 can be used when identity is verified digitally meeting HM Land Registry's digital identity standard, and that a conveyancer who verifies identity by online video call completes form ID5 and captures a screenshot of the person during the call.
• It says that the ability for non-conveyancers to verify identity by online video call was withdrawn on 5 February 2024.

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

Sources

• GOV.UK, HM Land Registry, Practice guide 67: evidence of identity, fetched 27 October 2026.

Next

Try the interactive tour, read about face verification or compare with the real estate flow.