I just signed up over the weekend for a simple storage box. Today I realized after contacting their support that order was paused pending identity verification, they use something calles idenfy.
Plenty providers have verification only when something seems "off" in some way. Amazon has both lots of experience and data for payment verification and the margin to absorb fraud costs that do go through, smaller providers not so much.
I opened two accounts (different emails, credit cards, billing address) in the span over two years from Colombia. First one worked perfectly fine, but for the second one they wanted me to provide id before spinning up anything. So not sure if this was introduced recently or if they have some system that flags accounts under certain conditions to provide additional info that I tripped the second time.
Hetzner: Excuse us Mr. S. Pamking from Armenia, paying with a credit card of an elderly french lady, could you please send us some id? After that we will gladly spin up your 100 VPS Mail-Servers.
> Excuse us Mr. S. Pamking from Armenia, paying with a credit card of an elderly french lady, could you please send us some id?
Amazon's cool with it. I guess they don't care as much? I do wonder where the fraud prevention requirements come from. It's an interesting question if they are even for fraud prevention.