Stripe Identity API
Stripe's document identity verification service that confirms real user identities by collecting government IDs and selfies, returning structured verification results via the Stripe API.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Inherits Stripe's full security posture: TLS enforced, restricted key scoping, PCI-DSS Level 1, SOC2 Type II. PII in verification reports is automatically redacted after configurable retention period. Webhook signatures must be verified. Identity data never logged by Stripe agents toolkit.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You are already using Stripe for payments and want to add identity verification without integrating a separate vendor, keeping user data within one compliance boundary.
Avoid When
You need deep global document support beyond Stripe's covered countries, or require specialized liveness detection beyond photo selfie comparison.
Use Cases
- • Triggering KYC identity verification flows for regulated financial or marketplace products
- • Programmatically checking the status of a user's identity verification from an agent workflow
- • Retrieving verified name, date of birth, and address from a completed verification session
- • Automating onboarding gates that require identity verification before account activation
- • Integrating identity verification into fraud prevention pipelines using Stripe's risk signals
Not For
- • Verifying business entities (use Stripe Connect for business KYB instead)
- • Continuous ongoing identity monitoring or re-verification at high frequency
- • Jurisdictions where Stripe Identity is not yet supported or licensed
Interface
Authentication
Uses standard Stripe API keys. Restricted keys can scope access to Identity resources only. Test mode supports simulated verification outcomes without requiring real documents. Secret key required for server-side session creation.
Pricing
Per-verification pricing with no monthly minimum. Stripe will not charge for verifications that fail due to document quality issues in some cases. Always confirm current pricing in Stripe dashboard.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ VerificationSession status is asynchronous — agents must listen to identity.verification_session.verified webhooks rather than polling, as status may lag
- ⚠ The VerificationReport object containing PII (name, DOB, ID number) requires an explicit retrieve call; it is not embedded in the session object by default
- ⚠ Test mode document simulation requires specific test document numbers; using random values returns unexpected errors
- ⚠ Redaction of sensitive verification data is automatic after a configurable period — agents accessing reports too late will receive redacted nulls
- ⚠ Consent must be collected from the end user before creating a session; Stripe provides a hosted flow but agent-built flows must handle consent logging themselves
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for Stripe Identity API.
Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.