Getting Through Stripe Identity Verification
Before Stripe will pay out, it has to verify who you are. Most people clear this in a few minutes. When it goes wrong it is usually for one of a small number of reasons, and they are all fixable.
Identity documents and address documents are different
This trips up almost everyone who gets stuck.
An identity document proves who you are. Stripe accepts a passport, a driver's licence, or a national identity card. It has to carry an expiry date.
An address document proves where you live. A utility bill or bank statement can serve this purpose. These generally have no expiry date, and that is fine, because Stripe is not asking them to.
If Stripe rejects your upload for having no expiry date, it was asking for an identity document and received an address document. Upload a passport or driver's licence instead. A letter, a voting paper or a rates notice will not work as identity, no matter how official it looks.
Stripe publishes the full list at acceptable verification documents.
Your details have to match the document exactly
Stripe compares the details on your account against the document character by character, and a machine is doing the comparing. Near enough is not enough.
The most common mismatches:
A missing or altered unit number. An address entered as 12 Example Street will not match a document that reads 12B Example Street.
A name you go by rather than your legal name. If your passport carries your full legal first name and your account has the shortened version you actually use, it will fail, even though both are you. Enter the name exactly as the document shows it.
Extra words in the account name. Your account name needs to be a plain full name and nothing else. Job titles, group names, or a school appended to a person's name will cause a rejection.
Capitalisation does not matter. You do not need to enter anything in block capitals.
Check your details at Payment Setup, correct anything that differs from your document, then upload again.
What Raised can and cannot do
We can see the reason Stripe has given for a rejection, and we can correct details on your account such as a mistyped address. If you are stuck, ask us and we will look.
We cannot approve your verification, override a rejection, or release funds. Stripe holds the money and makes the decision. Raised never holds your funds at any point.
If verification is genuinely blocked, Stripe's own support is the right place to go. They have a live chat at support.stripe.com.
Other messages you might see
"Invalid" next to your personal details means one of the fields conflicts with your document. Compare each field against the document rather than re-uploading.
"Too many requests, please try again later" is a rate limit, usually hit while setting up multi-factor authentication. Wait a while and try again.
A red "Stripe not connected" banner while your payment settings say connected and payouts enabled is usually a stale page. Reload, and it should clear.
If money has already come in
Payments taken while verification is outstanding are not lost. They sit with Stripe until your account is verified, then pay out normally. Stopping your campaign does not release them any sooner, so it is generally better to keep working through verification than to shut things down.