Face verification is live: reliable international identity proof in Yivi

A valid document is not the same as a verified person

Since we launched passport and ID card support in Yivi, practically anyone with a modern passport containing a chip has been able to read the secured chip in their document and turn it into a privacy-preserving credential in their identity wallet. That already proved something important: the document is genuine, its data has not been tampered with, and it was issued by a trusted authority.

But it did not yet prove one thing: that the person holding the phone is actually the person the document belongs to. A valid document can be borrowed, found, or stolen. That gap between “a valid document exists” and “this document belongs to the person in front of me” is exactly the gap that face verification closes.

We are proud to announce that face verification is now live in Yivi. When adding a passport, ID card, or Dutch driver’s license, users complete a quick face scan that confirms they are the rightful owner of the document before the credential is added to their wallet.

How it works

Adding a document to your Yivi wallet now follows six steps. Click through them below:

That fifth step is new, and it is the one that makes the entire flow trustworthy end to end. The chip proves the document is authentic. The face scan proves the document belongs to you.

Which documents are supported

Face verification works across the document types Yivi already supports:

Passports and ID cards from every country that follows the ICAO specification (Doc Series 9303) , provided the issuing country is present in the Dutch or German government masterlists. In practice this means virtually every international passport with a chip works, because the biometric passport standard is the same the world over, from across the entire European Union to Australia, China, Japan, Morocco, Thailand, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States and beyond.
Dutch driver’s licenses, which are fully supported today. We are exploring support for driver’s licenses from other countries as well.

For the full, up to date overview of supported countries and document types, see our international digital identity page .

Why this matters

For organizations that rely on Yivi for onboarding or identity checks, face verification raises the assurance level of every credential issued this way, without adding friction for the user. A few concrete use cases:

High-assurance KYC and onboarding: financial institutions and other regulated organizations can be confident that the person completing onboarding is the actual document holder, not someone using a document that is not theirs.
Cross-border identity proof: because the underlying document check already works internationally, face verification makes that international proof genuinely reliable, useful for organizations with customers or employees across multiple countries.
Age verification: prove you are old enough for a service while knowing the document, and now the face behind it, actually belongs to the person completing the check.
Preventing misuse of stolen or borrowed documents: a stolen or borrowed passport or ID card can pass the chip check, but it cannot pass the face check.

Privacy stays front and center

Adding a face scan to the flow does not change what Yivi stands for. The face verification itself runs on our own cluster, hosted on European servers in the Netherlands, not on infrastructure of a third party outside the EU. Nothing is persisted: your face scan is processed only to confirm the match with your document, and then immediately discarded. The credentials that result from it still follow Yivi’s dual-protocol approach:

IRMA/Idemix credentials for maximum privacy, using zero-knowledge proofs so you can, for example, prove you are over 18 without revealing your exact date of birth.
OpenID4VP with SD-JWT VC credentials for broad interoperability, aligned with the direction Europe has set with eIDAS 2.0 .

Face verification strengthens the assurance behind a credential. It does not weaken the data minimization principles that Yivi is built on. You still decide what you share, and with whom.

Try it yourself

Face verification is live today for anyone adding a passport, ID card, or Dutch driver’s license to their Yivi wallet. If you want to see the full country and document coverage, visit our international digital identity page . If you are an organization exploring high-assurance onboarding or cross-border identity verification with Yivi, reach out to our team at support@yivi.app .