At WHMCS, we know that reducing fraud and abuse of services is important for your business, both for your own data and for your customers'. For a brick-and-mortar business this could be as simple as checking a physical ID... but how do you verify the identities of customers in another country or on another continent when you're conducting business online?

In WHMCS 8.2, we're helping you solve that problem with a new built-in user identity verification system.

Identity verification helps you check whether the human on the other side of the screen is who they say they are. It's all about ensuring safety and security for both you and your customers. In 2020, the number of fraud attempts was up 24.2% from the previous year, with businesses paying an average of $3.36 for every dollar lost to fraud. That represents losses from chargebacks, lost payments, and costly time spent resolving all of these issues.

Preventing problems like this is only the beginning of what user identity verification can do to help your business, including:

• Reducing fraud and abandonment rates.
• Helping you avoid fines from the GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations in the case of preventable data breaches.
• Aiding in compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) rules in various countries.
• Assisting you in protecting customers from identity theft or hacked accounts.
• Preventing chargebacks.

The best part? It works. According to Validation.com, 72% of bad actors abandoned their transactions when they were asked for identification.

Identity verification goes beyond ordinary authentication, like username-and-password combinations. It verifies actual rather than claimed identity. To do this using WHMCS and Validation.com, all that's usually required is a picture of some official identification, like a driver's license, and a selfie. (You get to choose the required items.) The submitted information is compared and a decision is made on whether the identity asserted is legitimate.

Gathering all of the information and keeping it secure manually would be time-consuming and might detract from your customer experience over time. That's why identity verification services are so useful and important, taking care of getting and storing identifying information so you can focus on the actual verification and giving the great service your customers need.

Identity verification isn't necessary for every scenario, and can be used for many purposes, so it's up to each business to determine whether, when, and how to use it. In other industries, it's used, for example, to chart medical patients, onboard new employees, and register students, all in addition to its obvious usefulness for financial and commercial purposes, like in web hosting and ecommerce.

WHMCS 8.2 includes integration with Namecheap's trusted service, Validation.com, to provide automated user identity verification. For both admins and clients, it introduces simple processes that just take a few small steps.


All you need to do to get started is activate it in the Admin Area, signing up with Validation.com to get an API key during that process. You'll get to choose which features to enable, when to send requests, and the documents you want to require. WHMCS will set up your submission links, notifications, and everything else needed to provide a smooth user identity verification experience.


When logging in, clients who need to verify their identities will see a banner throughout the Client Area allowing them to take and submit the necessary photos, secured by SSL encryption. They'll just need access to a smartphone, tablet, or computer that includes a camera. As soon as they submit their items, you'll be able to see it in the Admin Area.


Validation.com won't check your customers' identity information for you. Instead, for heightened security and privacy, it allows you to do the actual validation yourself. Validation.com's staff can't see any of it, making sure it's secure and only accessible by you and your customer.


Our Validation.com integration works seamlessly with WHMCS's automated FraudLabs fraud checks. This means you don't have to spend time dealing with fraud check failures manually. Instead, automation lets you work with these quickly and giving a better overall experience to your customers. If an order is flagged as fraudulent by your FraudLabs settings and you're using Validation.com, they will see a convenient Submit Documents button to submit identifying information right away.


Using identity verification means you can worry less and focus on growing your business more. It saves you time, reduces costs from chargebacks and fraud, and improves your customer experience. Nothing can completely prevent fraud on the internet, but identity verification through Validation.com is a great start.

To help our customers get started with Validation.com and user identity verification, WHMCS has introduced exclusive special offers:

• All WHMCS license holders can get up to 5 checks every month for just $5.
• WHMCS license holders on the Business 10k license tier or higher can also receive a $100 monthly credit toward their Validation.com usage. That's the equivalent of 200 reviews and 5 agents.

If you need a higher tier from Validation.com, you won't lose these benefits. You'll just need to pay the difference. You'll see a credit for the applicable amount on your Validation.com invoice.

Upgrade now to WHMCS 8.2 so you can get started with user identity verification right away.