Who Onfido is
Onfido is an identity verification company founded in the UK in 2012. Entrust, a security company for payments, identities and data, completed its acquisition of Onfido in 2024, and Onfido's products are now offered and documented under the Entrust name.
It checks identity documents, matches the face in a selfie or a short video against them, and can add NFC chip reading, database checks, watchlist screening and proof of address, arranged in Workflow Studio, its drag-and-drop builder. Financial institutions, e-commerce, gaming and sharing economy companies use it, which is why it is one of the providers our KYC / AML module connects to.
What it does in your platform
KYC / AML
Runs the identity checks of your onboarding: the document, the face match and, where your licence asks for them, a database check, watchlist screening and proof of address. Results land in the module's review queue, and watchlist monitoring can keep running after day one.
How the connection works
The KYC / AML module talks to Onfido's API, now called the Entrust Identity Verification API, and runs the workflow you publish in Workflow Studio. Onfido's keys stay in your platform's secrets; your app only gets a token for one workflow run.
A customer signs up
The module creates an applicant in Onfido and starts a run of your published workflow for this customer.
A token for one run
The run comes with an SDK token that works for that run only, and the module hands it to your app.
The capture
Onfido's SDK guides the customer through the document photo and the selfie or video: on the web, on iOS and Android, and in our Flutter apps through Onfido's Flutter SDK.
The workflow runs
Onfido checks the document and the face, then runs the other steps of the workflow, such as a database check or watchlist screening.
A signed webhook
When the run completes, Onfido sends a webhook signed with your webhook token, and the module checks the signature before reading the outcome. Clear cases pass; the rest go to your team's review queue.
Monitoring goes on
If the workflow includes ongoing watchlist monitoring, new matches arrive by webhook too, and appear as cases in the backoffice.
Next to other providers
Onfido does not have to be your only verification provider. The module can route customers by country or risk to the provider that covers them best, and fall back to another one if a provider is unavailable.
The onboarding screens, the review queue and the audit trail belong to the module. Adding a provider next to Onfido, or leaving it later, does not change your app, and past checks stay linked to the provider that made them.
When Onfido fits best
A strong fit when
- You want to design the verification journey yourself, step by step, in a visual builder.
- You want NFC chip reading and database checks available next to the document and face checks.
- You want your customers' data kept in one region: Onfido runs separate environments for the EU, the US and Canada.
Also worth a look
- A provider with deeper coverage in a market that matters to you, routed next to Onfido for those customers.
- A provider you already have a contract with: it becomes a connector too.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Onfido account and contract in place with Entrust, in the region and for the markets your licence covers.
The workflow
We build the workflow with you in Workflow Studio: which documents, which biometric check and which extra checks apply to which customers.
The keys
The API credentials and the webhook token go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else, so every result is proven to come from Onfido.
A full test run
The whole flow runs in Onfido's sandbox with sample documents, from sign-up to the review queue, before your first real customer.
