Jwumasay joo-maJwumasay joo-maProving you are a real person, and what to do when it will not work.
Clients need to know the work was done by real, distinct people, and payouts have to go to a named person. Verification is two things: a government identity document, and a short camera check that shows a live person matching it. Both are decided by a person on our side.
A passport, a national identity card or a driving licence, as long as it is current and the whole document is readable. A passport is the easiest because it carries a machine-readable zone that can be checked automatically. A national identity card usually has no such zone, so it always waits for a person to look at it.
For a national ID card the upload page asks for the side with the lines of capital letters and < signs on it, which on most cards is the back, so sending that side is what it asks for. A passport is read from its photo page. While a document is waiting with our team a second upload is refused, so you cannot add the other side yourself. If a person reviewing it needs the other side, we will write and ask for it.
If you sent a file saved by a scanner rather than a photograph, our reader often cannot open it. Scanners commonly save documents in black and white, which is fine for text and removes the photograph we need to compare against your camera check. A photo of the same document taken with a phone, in good light, with the whole card or page in the frame, usually works where the scan does not.
Identity documents are decided by a person, not by software. There is a queue and it is worked through by hand, so nobody can tell you in advance when yours will be reached. Uploading the document again does not move you up the queue. If something is genuinely wrong with the file we will write and ask for another one.
It is a short video of you doing three small movements that are chosen at random each time, such as turning your head or blinking. The movements are what show a live person rather than a photograph. It takes under a minute and you can record it again as many times as you need.
The commonest cause is a microphone that is switched on but producing no sound, which can stop the browser writing the video file at all. The check notices this within a few seconds now and starts again without the microphone by itself. If it still records nothing, it sends the frames captured while you moved instead, and a person reviews those. If the camera will not open at all, the page says which of four reasons it is: permission refused, no camera found, the camera already in use by another app, or a browser that will not allow camera access.
A browser built into another app, such as the one that opens when you tap a link inside a social or messaging app, usually cannot give a page access to the camera at all, and there is no permission you can grant to change that. Open the platform in your phone's own browser, Chrome or Safari, and the check will work there.
A photograph cannot show three movements, so it cannot complete the check on its own and always waits for a person. It is there for devices that genuinely cannot record, and it is slower for you. If video is at all possible on your device, use it.
A check the software cannot pass on its own goes to a person to watch, and there is a queue of those. Nobody can tell you in advance when yours will be reached, and no automatic process will decide it either way. You do not need to record it again while it is waiting, and recording again does not move you up the queue.
The face in the video is compared with the photograph on your document as one signal among several. That comparison is not reliable enough on its own to decide anything, especially against a photo printed on a card and rephotographed, so a low score is a reason for a person to look rather than a refusal. A person makes the decision.
They are stored so the decision can be checked and appealed, and they are held in the region your account belongs to. They are used for verification and nothing else: not for training, not for advertising and not shared with clients. Clients never see your name, your document or your video.
Nobody can tell you in advance, and anybody who does is guessing. Both are decided by a person looking at what you sent, against whether the document is current and readable and whether the video shows a live person matching it. What helps is a clear photograph of the whole document and a video recorded in good light with your face unobstructed. What does not help is sending either of them again while the first is still waiting.
There is no set time, and we would rather say that than give you a number we cannot keep. Both the document and the camera check are decided by people working through a queue, so it depends on how many are ahead of yours. Nothing you do speeds it up, and sending the same thing again puts a second item in the same queue rather than moving you up it.
No. Software can flag things and can pass the clearest cases of a machine-readable passport, but every refusal and every held case is decided by a person. That is deliberate: an automatic refusal with nobody behind it is not something you could appeal, and appeals are read by a different person from the one who decided.
A refusal is a decision a person made and it comes with a reason. If you think it is wrong, you can ask us to look at it again through support, and a different person will. Sending the same document and the same video again without anything changing will usually reach the same answer.
Sometimes. An account may be asked to confirm its identity again, for example if a document has expired. If that happens you will be told what is needed and why, and your existing work and earnings are not affected while you do it.
The name on your account has to match your identity document, because that is the name a payout is sent to. If they differ, for example after a marriage or because a middle name was left out, tell support before your payout method is set up, and say which is correct. Do not change your payout details to a different person's name: money can only be sent to you.
Still stuck? Ask in your rooms, or open a support ticket if it is about your own account. Community · Support