Browse the questions we're most often asked in Support and in our Facebook group.
We're verifying the identity of our members to provide the safest possible environment for home exchange. We want to give our members, particularly our new members, the confidence to exchange their homes within our community.
While identity verification is not mandatory, we highly recommend it. Verifying your identity boosts your profile’s credibility and helps foster trust within our community, making it easier to connect with fellow members for exchanges.
People Like Us works with Stripe to conduct identity verification online. Stripe builds technology that’s used by millions of companies around the world such as Amazon, Google, and Zoom. Stripe helps with everything from accepting payments to managing subscriptions to verifying identities.
Stripe helps People Like Us confirm your identity by conducting the following checks:
Stripe captures images of the front and back of your government-issued photo ID and reviews it to make sure that the document is authentic. They’ve built an automated identity verification technology that looks for patterns to help determine if an ID document is real or fake. This process is like a bank teller checking your ID document to confirm that it’s real.
Stripe captures photos of your face and reviews them to confirm that the photo ID belongs to you. They’ve built automated identity verification technology that uses distinctive physiological characteristics of your face (known as biometric identifiers) to match the photos of your face with the photo on the ID document. This process is similar to a bank teller confirming that the photo on your ID document is you based on your appearance—but it’s a higher-tech and more accurate way to identify you as a unique person.
Stripe collects your name, date of birth, and government ID number, and validates that it’s real. They’ll check this information against a global set of databases to confirm that it exists.
Stripe asks for your consent before collecting and using your biometric information. They’ll only use your verification data in accordance with the permissions you grant before starting the verification process, and based on their Privacy Policy.
Learn more about how Stripe handles and stores your data.
Before starting the verification process, here’s what you need:
The quality of the images you capture affects success rates dramatically. Below are a few best practices to help make sure that your verification succeeds:
Stripe requires a valid, current, original, government-issued photo ID document. The list of acceptable documents varies by country but, in most countries, a passport, driver's licence or official identification document is acceptable. For a full list, see Acceptable Stripe Verification Documents, select your country and view the Identity Documents list.
Both People Like Us and Stripe have access to the information that you submit through the verification flow during the verification process. We rely on Stripe to help store your verification data while the process takes place. Stripe uses access controls and security standards that are at least as stringent as those used to handle their own KYC and payments compliance data.
Following successful completion of the verification process, Stripe deletes the verification data and only the verification status is retained by them.
Learn more about how Stripe handles and stores your data.
People Like Us stores your verified first name and surname and displays it to any exchange partner with whom you finalise exchanges. No other verification data is stored or displayed to others. See our Privacy Policy for further information.
Following successful completion of the verification process, Stripe's copy of the data is deleted and only the verification status is retained.
People Like Us retains your verified first and last name. You may choose to use a different first name on your profile (your preferred name), but your verified name will be shared exclusively with your exchange partner once an exchange has been finalised. For more information, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
Once the Stripe Identity Verification process completes successfully, People Like Us receives and saves your first and last names scanned from the photo ID you used. This may include middle names, if given on the document. Exact spellings and case are preserved exactly as given to us on the document. As these are the verified versions of your name, they are saved and can't be updated after verification has been successful.
We recognise and understand that you may want to use a different form of your name to the one on your official documentation. This may be a shortened form, include a partner's name, a middle name or any other name. We provide a Preferred Name for this purpose, which you can update on your Member Profile. If present, your Preferred Name will be used throughout the system. You may also hide your surname on the platform by updating your Member Profile.
When you finalise an exchange, your verified first and last names are shown to your exchange partner, together with your preferred name.
The process of capturing your government-issued photo ID and your live photograph in Stripe will take 3-4 minutes. You can then return to People Like Us while your verification is processed. This may take a further 3-5 minutes. When complete, your People Like Us profile will display a Verified badge. If further information is required to complete the verification, you will instead see a notice that Stripe requires input and an explanation as to what is required.