Capabilities · Verification

ID Verification
South Africa

One identity verification service covering documents, biometrics, address, account and KBA — built for FICA compliance and the audit trail it demands. Verify every customer. Even the ones others miss.

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Person being verified through an identity check

The challenge

ID verification is the moment your customer meets you.

It's the first identity decision a business makes about a customer. Every ID check that follows — biometrics, address, account, re-authentication — inherits whatever happened here. Get this wrong and the rest of the journey carries the cost.

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Not every customer is straightforward

Asylum-seekers, refugees, foreign nationals, expired documents — the customers your business has to serve. Stand-alone tools quietly fail on the ones who matter most.

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Not every check stands alone

A verified ID is the foundation, not the finish line. Biometrics, address, account, KBA — every step downstream depends on this one being defensible and reusable.

The insight

One capability on the platform. Not an island.

ID verification runs on Contactable's Integrated Identity Platform — alongside biometric verification, AML screening, business verification, fraud detection and reusable KYC. Same orchestration layer. Same audit trail.

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What we verify

Everything ID verification covers.

South African ID verification done properly means more than checking against Home Affairs — it means every document type the customer base actually presents, across identity verification services built for enterprise scale. Five sub-capabilities working through one ID validation service.

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SA Documents

Every South African ID, drivers' licence and passport.

Run ID verification online — from light SA-only checks to full forensic global validation across thousands of document types, including the ones competitors politely skip. SA drivers' licence PDF417 extraction. Real-time and offline DHA. The lot.

  • SA ID card and ID book — Home Affairs validation
  • SA Passport — forensic verification
  • SA Drivers' Licence — PDF417 extraction and decryption
  • Knowledge-based authentication from credit and DHA data
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"Since 2020, Contactable have been embedded in Signio, helping motor dealerships across South Africa achieve FICA compliance and mitigate fraud. Their expertise is central to the quality of our product offering. I'd recommend them to any business seeking a KYC partner that integrates deeply and delivers consistently."

Lesedi Dlamini

Product Owner | Signio, Lightstone

For teams who turn identity into advantage

Your questions, answered

The ID verification questions we hear most — from compliance, onboarding, fraud and product teams across SA enterprise.

ID verification as a service is a managed, API-delivered online identity verification capability — instead of building or running your own system, you call ours. Contactable's service verifies South African and foreign documents, biometrics, addresses and bank accounts in real time, with a defensible audit trail and FICA-compliant decisioning. One integration; every check.

Yes — for identity verification in South Africa, Contactable checks IDs against Home Affairs in real time, and can verify against the DHA dataset even when the live DHA service is down — one of only a few local platforms to offer both. Customers who need to verify a South African ID number get a result in seconds, with a biometric match against HANIS images and a full audit trail to defend the decision.

More than most. Forensic document verification across thousands of document types — including the ones competitors politely skip: asylum (NIIS), refugee (NIIS), expired papers, foreign-issued IDs. SA ID cards and ID books (Home Affairs), SA passports (forensic), SA drivers' licences (PDF417 extraction and decryption).

Fast enough that customers don't notice. Sub-90 seconds end-to-end for full IDV including document, biometric, address and account checks — across 100M+ API calls every month. 90%+ AI-driven decisioning, configurable to your risk thresholds.

Built for it. FICA, POPIA, RICA — every check generates an audit certificate, every decision is configurable to your risk thresholds, every step defensible under regulator scrutiny. ISO 27001 certified data handling. SARB consortium membership underpins the regulatory alignment.

Ready to explore further?

Our team can walk through your specific setup.

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Defend every check. Decide with confidence.

When your customers arrive — South African or foreign, with documents or without — we're the layer that's ready to verify them. Talk to a specialist about your specific journey.

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