Verification methods

A person verifies their identity once, with an identity document. At launch that document is a passport, and more methods are coming soon.

Whatever the method, the business never learns the person's name or any detail of their document.

Passport

Signet works with electronic passports: those with a chip, marked by the chip symbol on the cover.

1. The person holds their passport to their phone, which reads the chip over NFC. It reads the data printed on the photo page and the issuing country's signature over the chip's contents. It never reads the photo stored on the chip.
2. The phone proves, with a zero-knowledge proof, that the passport is genuine and unexpired: the issuing country's signature is valid, through that country's certificate chain.
3. The proof gives the registry a tag that is the same every time this passport enrolls, so the registry accepts each passport only once. The registry also receives the passport's expiry month and its issuing authority.

No name, document number, date of birth or photo leaves the phone.

Support depends on how the issuing country signs its passports: see supported countries.

Coming soon

These methods are not released yet. Beta partners get them first.

• EU Digital Identity Wallet. Under the EU's eIDAS 2 regulation, every member state must offer its citizens this wallet, which holds person identification data (PID) issued by the state. A person will verify with the PID in their wallet.
• National ID cards. Identity cards with a chip, read over NFC in the same way as a passport.
• Bank identity. An identity check the person has already passed with their bank.