[solardev]

I mentioned it in just in case it makes a difference that someone else handles the verification. Like PCI (for credit card processing), outsourcing it removes a lot of the cost and risk of doing it yourself and processing/storing all that sensitive PII.

At the end of the day, I don't think there's any non-governmental, non-biometric, non-financial way to really cross-check physical and online identities. It's gotta be tied into the real world somehow, and outsourcing it makes a lot more doable...

But yeah, if they don't want the user to have to provide documents at all, I think they're just SOL.

[verdverm]

even with the systems you describe, there is no perfect system

there are governments out there that will happily make/accept fake identities to beat these systems

it's a tradeoff and we don't know the details of OP's project, but I suspect they are worrying about free tier abusers (as this is the most typical reason this question is asked on HN)