Proof of Address
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This is an introductory guide and overview for the Proof of Address report and contains advice on results logic. You'll find API documentation separately.
The following guide assumes you are using API v3.5 onwards. If you are using an earlier version of the API some features of this report will not be available. If you would like 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 see the respective API documentation or email our Client Support team.
Introduction
The Proof of Address (PoA) report enables the review of uploaded documents to verify an end user's address. The PoA report checks whether information provided by the applicant matches that on the PoA document, in addition to asserting whether the document is supported and has a valid date of issue.
Documents can be captured and uploaded using the Onfido SDKs or uploaded directly via the API. Users can upload PoA documents from anywhere in the world but the document must have been issued by a supported country and be a supported document for this report.
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
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 3 months | |
Utility Bill (electricity, water, gas, broadband, landline ) | Last 3 months | Last 6 months | Last 3 months | |
Council Tax letter | Last 1 year | Last 6 months | ||
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 |
Overall result 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 document was not of sufficient quality to be processed (e.g. image blurred, data points not visible on the document). In this scenario, the value of the
image_quality
sub-breakdown (which is part of theimage_integrity
breakdown) will beunidentified
and no data will be extracted from the document, hence the report properties attribute will be empty and all the other breakdowns will benull
- the document is not a valid PoA document: in this scenario the value of the
supported_document
sub-breakdown (which is part of thedocument_classification
breakdown) will beunidentified
, no data will be extracted from the document, hence the report properties attribute will be empty and the data comparison breakdowns will be set tonull
- the 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 thedocument_classification
breakdown) will beconsider
. Data is extracted from the document and returned as part of 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
andaddress
(which are part of thedata_comparison
breakdown) will have a value ofunidentified
. Data is extracted from the document and returned as part of the report properties attribute.