The passport you accepted last year may not be valid today.
Documents expire, permits lapse and sanction lists change, and the forgeries keep getting better. Keeping up with that is our day job. EyeDQ gives the people at your desk what they need to tell a real document from a good copy, and to prove they checked.
- Manual and automated checks
- 200+ countries and issuing authorities
| Correctness | Name, date of birth, face match |
| Credibility | 14 security features checked |
| Cross-reference | Chip data matches printed data |
| Collateral | Not lost or stolen · no sanction hit |
| Credentials | Residence permit valid |
| Continuity | Re-check 29 Nov 2026 · expiry alert set |
Which one is your desk?
Everywhere the question is the same: is this the person on the document, and may they do this? What goes wrong differs per desk. Some check by eye. Others run scanning software or a device. Both rest on the same reference library of what each document should look like. And what the machine will not settle goes to someone at a helpdesk or in the back office.
You take on a customer
Anti-money-laundering law makes the identity check a duty, and it does not stop after the first check.
Compliance & AML officer
The auditor does not ask whether you checked the client. They ask to see how.
What you getEvery client file shows which document was seen, which features were checked, and by whom.
Legally obliged to identify every client
You must identify every client, but you see a foreign passport a few times a year and you are not a document expert.
What you getThe document in front of you, side by side with what it should look like. One user is enough.
Cash or a SIM against a foreign document
Thirty seconds to spot a fake passport, or a fake banknote. Get it wrong and the loss is yours.
What you getID documents and banknotes in one reference tool.
You take on a worker, a student or a tenant
Right-to-work, right-to-rent and sponsor duties put the check on the business taking the person on, and the fines are charged per person.
HR & onboarding lead
Hundreds of new starters, each with a right-to-work check, and one illegal worker is a fine per case.
What you getCheck document and permit at hiring, with an alert before either expires.
Screening staff is a condition of your licence
Every guard and every crew member is screened before the first shift, and your own licence depends on it.
What you getThe check on file for your own staff, and for the contractors and visitors who come through the gate.
Admissions & compliance
Every international student brings an immigration check, and the whole year’s intake arrives in one month.
What you getPassport and permit checked at enrolment, and the outcome recorded where an inspector can find it.
The penalty follows whoever accepted the duty
A negotiator decides whether a passport is genuine while the tenant waits, and the agency that signed for the duty carries the penalty.
What you getThe negotiator sees what the document should look like before the tenancy is signed, and the check leaves a dated record.
You check at the desk, the gate or the signup
No law needed: a forged document at the counter is a direct loss.
Fraud & loss-prevention manager
A forged driving licence at the counter is a car you never see again, and boarding an undocumented passenger is a sanction.
What you getThe desk compares the document with the real one before the keys change hands.
Document examiner & fraud investigator
The cases automated tools cannot decide land on your desk.
What you getReference images and security features per document and banknote. Enough to make the call and defend it.
Age & player verification lead
Your licence depends on the door and the till. One person who should not have been let through puts it at risk.
What you getAge and identity from the document, with the checks your regulator expects to see on file.
Offering the check under your own name?
Your users, clients or members have to check identity documents, and they come to you for it. You put the check in front of them, and we keep the reference material behind it current.
Three things you are held to.
You used to glance at a passport and be done.
Your own operation
The person at the desk, on the payroll or on the screen is who the document says. If not, you carry it: the car that never comes back, or the worker you cannot legally employ.
Sector inspections
Regulators and auditors no longer ask whether you checked. They ask to see how: which document, which features, which lists, by whom, and when it was last re-checked.
Laws, licences and fines
Anti-money-laundering, right-to-work, age and licence rules keep expanding, and fines are counted per case. Investigations and licence reviews follow the cases you missed.
Where the rules stand.
A selection of what our customers are measured against. Every line links to the source it comes from.
The EU anti-money-laundering regulation starts to apply. Identity is verified either with a document or with an electronic identity at assurance level substantial or high, and the customer file has an expiry date: one year for higher-risk customers, five years for everyone else.
EUR-Lex ↗Selling tobacco in the UK to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 becomes an offence. The date of birth on the document decides the sale, and guessing no longer works. A retailer’s only defence is having taken the verification steps set out in regulations.
legislation.gov.uk ↗UK right-to-work checks extend beyond employees to people engaged under a worker’s contract, to individual sub-contractors and to online matching services. The check has to be made before the engagement starts, and the employer carries the penalty — up to £45,000 per worker, £60,000 on a repeat — even when a third party ran it.
legislation.gov.uk ↗ GOV.UK ↗England’s right-to-rent code of practice applies: £10,000 per occupier on a first breach, £20,000 on a repeat within three years, half that for a lodger. The letting agent carries it where it accepted the duty in writing, and anyone without an eVisa is checked against an original document, in person.
GOV.UK ↗EU identity cards without a working machine-readable zone, or below the ICAO 9303 minimum security standard, stopped being valid — on this date or at their printed expiry, whichever came first. Cards that clear that bar but fall short of the full standard follow on 3 August 2031.
EUR-Lex ↗A Dutch casino’s fine for admitting two players listed in the national exclusion register was published: €25,000, reduced to €21,500 by the court because the case had taken too long. Every visitor’s identity is established and verified, and the register is consulted before every entry.
Kansspelautoriteit ↗The EU Entry/Exit System is fully operational: short stays by non-EU travellers are registered at the border, with fingerprints and facial image checked against the travel document. Airlines, ferry and coach operators query the system before departure, and a passenger refused on arrival travels back at the carrier’s cost.
European Commission ↗Belgium raised its social-law fines. Employing someone who has no right to be in the country is a level-4 offence: an administrative fine of €3,000 to €35,000, or a criminal fine of €6,000 to €70,000, multiplied by the number of workers concerned.
werk.belgie.be ↗Spain’s traveller register came into use. Hotels, campsites, tourist apartments, booking platforms and car rental firms record the document type, its number and the separate support number printed on it, report within 24 hours of the booking, and keep the record for three years.
BOE ↗What these rules have in common is the part no law describes: someone has to decide whether the document in front of them is genuine. Documents differ by country, by series and by year of issue, and the features change. You cannot judge that from experience. You have to look it up.
Most organisations cannot keep a document expert on staff. EyeDQ is the third party that does this for you, inside the process where the check happens.
An ID raises six questions. Most checks answer one.
Reading a name, a face, an address and a date of birth from a passport, driving licence or ID card is where most verification stops. The six questions below are what a full check covers.
The name, date of birth and nationality on the document, and the face on it against the person in front of you or on the screen.
The security features an issuing authority builds in: certificates, watermarks, and what should appear under infrared and black (UV) light.
The printed data against the NFC chip, and both against external sources. A real document with altered data fails here.
Lost-and-stolen document databases, politically exposed persons (PEP) and sanction lists. A genuine passport can still be one you must not accept.
Authenticity and rights of the ID: the right to work, the right of residence, the licence category. Identity alone does not grant permission.
Overlap between multiple documents (triangulation), re-checks at set intervals, alerts on changes and expiries, and secure, compliant storage of the evidence.
The first five questions tell you an ID is qualified today. The sixth is why it stays qualified.
Manual where it has to be, automated where it can be.
Expert manual checks and automated verification, with the Credentials and Continuity services built on top.
We start at the desk.
A bank counter is not a building site, and a lettings office is not an airport gate. Different rules, different documents, and a different person doing the checking. So that is where we begin, and everything else follows from it.
We follow the rules before they land, and we know where each tool stops. When the law changes or your volume grows, you have someone to call who already knows your setup.
Web-based reference database for manual checks of ID documents and banknotes. The tool border control, banks and airlines use when a document has to be checked by eye. No hardware: a browser and a login is all it takes. In the 6C journey this is the expert layer for Credibility: the primary tool where documents are checked by eye, and the fallback when a scan cannot decide.
- ID documents and banknotes from over 200 countries and issuing authorities
- Security features per document: what to look for, and what it looks like under UV and infrared
- Step-by-step guidance for staff without forensic training
- Onboarding takes 1 working day once the agreement is signed
What a subscription costs
You pay for the number of people who use it. Pick the range that fits your desks, or tell us how many locations you have.
- Prices exclude VAT.
- Subscriptions run per quarter, billed and paid upfront.
- Terminable after the first two quarters, with one month’s notice.
- Onboarding takes one working day, once the agreement is signed and the details we need to invoice are complete.
Free 3-day trialFull DocumentChecker access for three countries of your choice. No payment details.
Automated authenticity checks on passports, ID cards and other ID documents. Three depths: from a two-check compliance scan of an uploaded copy, without hardware, to a forty-five-check scan of the original with a desk scanner. When a document fails the scan, DocumentChecker is the expert fallback.
- On-site with a desk scanner, or remote on an uploaded copy with lighter checks
- Desk scanners supplied by EyeDQ, charged separately
- Compliance report per checked document
- Escalation route to DocumentChecker built in
What a subscription costs
You pay for the checks you run each quarter. The number of scanners does not change the price.
- MRZ (machine-readable zone) & date-of-issuance check
- Document validity check & compliance report
- Everything in Lite
- UV / IR / hologram / watermark validity & pattern checks
- RFID chip validation, cross-checked against the MRZ and the printed page (VIZ)
- Everything in Standard
- Cross-checking & validating all document data, with classification
- Document response, tampering & pattern-matching checks
- Every plan includes guided checks and the professional helpdesk, through DocumentChecker.
- Every plan includes secure, compliant storage of the evidence for one year.
- Desk scanners are supplied by EyeDQ and charged separately, at €1,750 each.
- Prices exclude VAT.
- Subscriptions run per quarter, billed and paid upfront.
- Terminable after the first two quarters, with one month’s notice.
- Onboarding takes one working day, once the agreement is signed and the details we need to invoice are complete.
Free 3-day trialFull AuthentiScan Lite access. You get an invitation by email, no payment details.
Credentials and Continuity cover permits, re-checks, alerts and evidence storage. Those sit on top of both solutions and are where our own work goes.