Proof of Address

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This guide presents a technical overview of Onfido's Proof of Address report.

The following guide assumes you are integrating using API v3.5 onwards. If you are using an earlier version of the API, some features of this report will not be available. In order to use the updated PoA report, please upgrade your API integration to use at least v3.5.

If you're looking for PoA report information for earlier versions of our API, please refer to our API reference documentation or email our Client Support team.

Introduction

The Proof of Address (PoA) report allows you to verify an end user's address by reviewing an eligible uploaded document. The PoA report cross checks the address information provided by the applicant with the details of a PoA document (such as a bank statement or utility bill), in order to verify the authenticity of the address. In addition, the report also asserts whether the document is supported by Onfido, as well as having a valid date of issue.

For a full list of countries and documents supported by the PoA report, please refer to the sections below.

Supported issuing countries

Documents issued by the following countries are supported for a PoA report:

Group A:

United Kingdom
Isle of Man
Jersey
Gibraltar
San Marino
Andorra
Switzerland
Monaco

Group B:

European Economic Area (excluding Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria)
Canada
New Zealand

Group C:

United States of America
Australia
Hong Kong
Singapore
Philippines
Indonesia
Vietnam
Mexico
Brazil
Colombia
Argentina
Ghana
Ivory Coast
Kenya
Nigeria
Senegal
South Africa
Tanzania
Uganda
Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Malaysia
Ukraine
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Algeria
Ethiopia
Bermuda
Guatemala
Panama
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Costa Rica
Chile
Jamaica
Ecuador
Peru
Dominican Republic
Bulgaria
Serbia
South Korea
Taiwan

Supported documents

The following document types are supported for a PoA report, along with its issue date validity based on document issuing country:

Document	Group A	Group B	Group C
Bank Statement or Building Society Statement	Last 3 months	Last 6 months	Last 6 months
Utility Bill (electricity, water, gas, broadband, landline )	Last 3 months	Last 6 months	Last 6 months
Local Government Tax Letter	Last 1 year	Last 6 months	Kenya only
Benefits Letter (e.g. Job seeker allowance, House benefits, Tax credits)	Last 1 year	Last 6 months
Mortgage statement	Last 1 year	Last 1 year
Mobile phone bill		Last 6 months
General letter (financial institution/utility company)		Last 6 months
Insurance statement or brokerage statement		Last 6 months
Pension statement/letter or Property tax statement/letter		Last 1 year
Identity document with address	Supported	Supported		Limited to certificate's issue and expiry dates
Address certificate		Hungary only	Turkey only	Limited to certificate's issue and expiry dates if present, otherwise unlimited
Exchange House Statement			United Arab Emirates only	Validity limited to the last 6 months

Report logic

The PoA report can return a result of clear or consider or null.

The overall report result will be clear if all of the following are true:

the quality of the provided PoA document is sufficient to process it
the provided PoA document is a supported PoA document
the provided PoA document has a valid date of issue
the data provided by the applicant matches the data that is on their PoA document

The overall report result will be null if any of the following is true:

the issuing_country field set when uploading the document is from an unsupported country
the issuing_country field is not provided when uploading the document

Please note that if the report result is null, the report status will be cancelled.

The overall report result will be consider if any of the following is true:

the PoA document was not of sufficient quality to be processed (i.e. image blurred, data points not visible on the document). In this scenario, the value of the image_quality sub-breakdown (which is part of the image_integrity breakdown) will be unidentified and no data will be extracted from the document. As a result, the report properties attribute will be empty and all the other breakdowns will be null
the document is not a valid PoA document. In this scenario, the value of the supported_document sub-breakdown (which is part of the document_classification breakdown) will be unidentified and no data will be extracted from the document. As a result, the report properties attribute will be empty and the data comparison breakdowns will be set to null
the PoA document does not have a valid date of issue. In this scenario, the value of the valid_document_date sub-breakdown (which is part of the document_classification breakdown) will be consider. Data is extracted from the document and returned in the report properties attribute
the data provided by the applicant does not match the data extracted from the PoA document. In this scenario, the breakdowns first_name, last_name and address (which are part of the data_comparison breakdown) will have a value of unidentified. Data is extracted from the document and returned in the report properties attribute
there is evidence of visual fraud on the document. In this scenario, the value of the visual_fraud sub-breakdown (which is part of the source_integrity breakdown) will be consider, hence the report is consider

More details regarding the structure of the Proof of Address report and an example result can be found in our API reference documentation.

Proof of Address Report task

Similar to other Onfido reports, to run a PoA report, the dedicated Proof of Address Report task should be added to a Studio workflow from the Workflow Builder.

In order to verify the address data, the document's data needs to be compared with data provided by one of the following:

workflow input data
a Proof of Address Capture task
a Document Capture task
an Autofill task
a Profile Data Capture task

Below you will find an illustrated example of a Studio workflow running a PoA report:

Proof of Address workflow

More information about report tasks can be found in our Studio Product Guide.

Proof of Address Report task results

If you wish to obtain the specific outputs from the Proof of Address Report task via the Onfido API (for example, the overall report result or breakdown results), you can manage this by configuring the Workflow Output in the Studio Workflow Builder. You can also retrieve all associated output data from a Proof of Address report.

You can refer to our Studio product guide for more information on Workflow Output configuration. Once set up, the output can be consumed by making a Retrieve Workflow Run call to the Onfido API. Report results are found in the output property.

Workflow Run results can also be accessed on the results tab of your Studio Dashboard.