How to implement identity verification in an eCommerce website?
To get started with identity verification to onboard customers successfully, we must familiarize ourselves with the critical steps required for the correct know-your-customer procedure:
1. Customer’s onboarding journey needs to be monitored. You need to ensure that you distinguish between the guest user, registered user, and verified one.
2. Assign verification status next to your customer. This is used to verify processed orders and double-check whether the user is successfully verified.
3. Create additional automation and notify the customer of his verification status. For instance, you should send an email once the customer is successfully verified. If he is denied, it is a common practice to display additional information, providing concrete steps to retry verification.
How Zapier automates identity verification
Since Shopify is a platform specifically designed for merchants, it is the ideal solution to have identity verification installed right into your e-commerce store. For that, we will utilize Zapier. Zapier is a workflow automation tool with 5000+ other applications. We at iDenfy also published our official plugin – the first first-party solution for identifying customers on Zapier.
Together with the Shopify plugin, iDenfy integration can create powerful workflows which trigger during specific actions from Shopify:
- new orders,
- new paid orders,
- new or updated customers’ data.
Once events are triggered, ID verification or AML checks are initiated. Also, you can add additional integration with other applications of your choice: Salesforce, Hubspot, etc.
To start the workflow, simply complete the registration in the Zapier platform and start a new project by connecting Shopify app with iDenfy.
Integrate identity verification with 3 steps
The first step is to create an identity verification request once the customer is created in Shopify. For that, the Zapier triggers are the perfect solution since they automatically will detect new account creations. Once detected, Zapier will use our API to create verification tokens. The generated API token appended to the redirection URL needs to be delivered to the client. We can use any email provider, in this case, Gmail.
Here you can automatically integrate this Zap.
The second step is to set up another Zap, solely responsible for using the verification status to update customer data directly in Shopify. For that, we will create two different paths: for approved and for denied verifications. The Zap triggers once a new verification is initialized. Then, once verification is finished – we check for verification status to determine the next pathway. If the verification status is approved, we update the customer, otherwise – we ask the user to retry by sending a new email.
Below you can see the workflow of approved verification. We are utilizing the customer’s email address to find him in Shopify. Once found, we assign a custom tag with verification status. The naming logic is completely up to your style, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll add a hyphen after idenfy, thus resulting in the following tag – “idenfy-APPROVED”.
Unfortunately , Zapier does not allow sharing the Zaps, which include pathways, as of now. You need to carefully check the attached images, and if questions arise during the integration, our support team will be happy to help.
To finalize the integration, we’ll create a final Zap, acting as the new orders watcher. This Zap will wait for a new order in Shopify. Once the order occurs, the customer’s custom tag, set by the second Zap, is verified. If verification is APPROVED – the order should be treated as a valid one. At this moment, Zapier does not allow direct modification of the order, for instance, marking the order as canceled. Considering that, we suggest sending an email either to yourself or filling in the data in your database.
Once you have the data stored, you can use it for validating the customer during the order fulfillment stage.
Going further for your antifraud automation
Now as you have successfully integrated an identity verification solution for your e-commerce site, you can take a look at other antifraud tools we offer. Those include proxy verification and proof of address verifications.
For e-commerce startups, it is indeed common to use fraudulent addresses during registration. This is often done to conceal the identity or to use an intermediate party for receiving the order. For that, we offer address verification, which verifies that address is legitimate and provides the risk level of fraud estimate.
Another safeguard is IP address verification. Fraudsters usually are aware of IP address relevancy in tracking whereabouts. They utilize different proxy solutions or VPNs to conceal their true identity. We cover the most common proxy types in our IP proxy guide. Once the IP address check is configured, it will be checked automatically after identity verification completion, and the risk status will be displayed next to it.
Contact us to learn more about our Zapier integration. If you have any additional requests – feel free to reach out!
