Introduction to Identity

Plaid's Identity product helps you verify users' identities by accessing information on file with their financial institution. Using Identity, you can access a user's phone number, email address, mailing address, and name. This can be used to fight fraud by verifying that the linked financial institution account is owned by the same user who created an account with you.

Plaid provides two endpoints for Identity: /identity/get retrieves the user's name and contact information from their financial institution, while /identity/match allows you to provide a name and contact information for a user and returns a match score indicating how well that information matches the information on file with their financial institution, simplifying the process of using identity data for account ownership verification. Both endpoints can be used to reduce fraud, improve user onboarding and conversion, and to complement Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance checks.

Identity can be used to verify all major account types supported by Plaid, including checking and savings accounts, credit cards, brokerage accounts, and loans. Identity coverage can be used to verify an account before initiating an ACH transaction: 97% of Items initialized with Auth provide Identity data as well.

Depending on your use case, you may want to verify the identity of all users, or only some. For example, you might want to verify the identity of any user initiating a funds transfer, or you might only verify users who you have identified as being higher risk, based on data such as email address, location, financial institution, or activity patterns.

Plaid Identity can be combined with Plaid Identity Verification in a single workflow to provide full identity verification and fraud reduction. Identity Verification is used for KYC, to verify that the user of your app is the person they claim to be, while Identity is used to confirm that the ownership information on their linked bank or credit card account matches this verified identity.

The /identity/get endpoint provides you with several pieces of information. The name is guaranteed to be available; the email address, phone number, and address are usually available, but may be null otherwise.

Identity data returned by /identity/get includes owners' names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers as reported by the financial institution. In the case of an Item containing accounts with multiple owners, all owners' information will be provided. For business accounts, the account owner’s name can be that of a business.

1"owners": [
2  {
3    "addresses": [
4      {
5        "data": {
6          "city": "Malakoff",
7          "country": "US",
8          "postal_code": "14236",
9          "region": "NY",
10          "street": "2992 Cameron Road"
11        },
12        "primary": true
13      }
14    ],
15    "emails": [
16      {
17        "data": "accountholder0@example.com",
18        "primary": true,
19        "type": "primary"
20      },
21      {
22        "data": "accountholdersecondary0@example.com",
23        "primary": false,
24        "type": "secondary"
25      },
26    ],
27    "names": [
28      "Alberta Bobbeth Charleson"
29    ],
30    "phone_numbers": [
31      {
32        "data": "1112223333",
33        "primary": true,
34        "type": "home"
35      }
36    ]
37  }
38]

Using /identity/match, Identity data fields such as names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers can be matched against the owners’ identity information on connected accounts. Multiple fields are matched in a single request, and a separate score is returned for each field to indicate how closely it matched. Customers using Identity Match can experience onboarding conversion improvements of 20% or more, without increasing fraud rates, when using Identity Match versus using their own matching algorithms.

If you are already using Identity Verification, you can further enhance your verification process by enabling Financial Account Matching in your Identity Verification template. This feature allows you to match the data collected during KYC without having to specify the user field in your /identity/match request. To ensure accurate matching, it's important to maintain consistency in the client_user_id used for end users across all products.

Data returned by /identity/match includes scores from matching a user's name, address, phone number, and email with the account owner's data that was present on the connected account. A score ranging from 0 to 100 is provided for each identity field. The score for a given field will be missing if the identity information for that field was not provided in the request or unavailable at the connected account. In the case of an Item containing accounts with multiple owners, the highest matched scores are returned.

Example of how to interpret name match score

1{
2  "accounts": [
3    {
4      ..
5      "legal_name": {
6        "score": 90,
7        "is_nickname_match": true,
8        "is_first_name_or_last_name_match": true
9      },
10      "phone_number": {
11        "score": 100
12      },
13      "email_address": {
14        "score": 100
15      },
16      "address": {
17        "score": 100,
18        "is_postal_code_match": true
19      },
20      ..
21    },
22  ]
23}

Items created via Same Day micro-deposits, Instant micro-deposits, Database Match, or Database Insights are not typically compatible with any other Plaid products besides Auth and Transfer. An exception is Identity Match, which can be used with these Items if they were previously seen on the Plaid network (approximately 30% of these Items).

1. To enable the Item for Identity Match, identity must be included in the optional_products, required_if_supported_products, or additional_consented_products array during the /link/token/create call at Item creation. (For this flow, identity should not be included in the products array, since including any other product than auth in the products array can prevent micro-deposit or database verification flows from activating.)
   • If this was not done during Item creation, you can Identity consent to an existing Item by sending it through update mode.
2. Call /identity/match.

If the Item is supported by Identity Match, you will receive results. If the Item was not previously seen on the Plaid network and therefore cannot be used with Identity Match, you will receive a PRODUCTS_NOT_SUPPORTED error and will not be billed for the API call.

For details on testing this flow, see Testing Same-Day Micro-deposits.

Note that this applies to the Identity Match endpoint only; Items created using these flows are not compatible with /identity/get.

Identity can be tested in Sandbox against test data. Plaid provides a GitHub repo with test data for testing Identity in Sandbox, helping you test configuration options beyond those offered by the default Sandbox user. For more information on configuring custom Sandbox data, see Configuring the custom user account.

/identity/match can be tested in Sandbox using custom user accounts as described above. Note that it is not recommended to send real user data or PII in the Sandbox environment for use with /identity/match, as Sandbox is meant for testing purposes.

For details on testing Identity Match with Same Day Micro-deposits, see Testing Same-Day Microdeposits.

The Identity Document Upload add-on can be used to verify account ownership based on a bank statement uploaded by an end user. This feature is intended primarily for use with Items created via loginless Auth flows, such as Same-Day Micro-deposits, Instant Micro-deposits, or Database Insights. For more details, see Identity Document Upload.

For a real-life example of an app that incorporates Identity, see the Node-based Plaid Pattern Account Funding sample app. Pattern Account Funding is a sample account funding app that fetches Identity data in order to verify identity prior to a funds transfer. The Identity code can be found in items.js.

For a tutorial walkthrough of creating a similar app, see Account funding tutorial.

Identity is billed on a one-time fee model, meaning you will be billed once for each Item with Identity added to it. Identity Match is billed on a per-request flat-fee basis. To view the exact pricing you may be eligible for, apply for Production access or contact Sales. For more details about pricing and billing models, see Plaid billing.

To get started building with Identity, see Add Identity to your App.

If you're ready to launch to Production, see the Launch Center.