Liveness Test for identity flows
Tests whether a living person (not a photograph or a recording) completed the verification, and returns a pass or fail result.
The Liveness Test does not run alone: it runs together with ID Verification and Facial Match as one bundle. One flow then answers three questions: whose ID number it is, whether the face matches the Home Affairs photograph, and whether a living person completed the capture.
What you get, and where it stops
What you get
- A pass or fail result on whether a living person, rather than a photograph or a recording, completed the capture.
- Evidence that a person, not an image, was on the other end of a remote identity step, in the same flow as ID Verification and Facial Match.
Where it stops
- Who the person is. Liveness speaks to “someone real”, not “this particular someone”. That pairing comes from ID Verification and Facial Match.
- Whether the person acted freely. Liveness tests presence, not coercion.
Runs in the bundle with
What you need to run it
- A capture in the flow
- The customer positions their face in an on-screen frame, through their own camera.
- ID Verification and Facial Match
- Liveness runs together with them: ID Verification confirms the ID number, and Facial Match compares the selfie with the latest photograph Home Affairs holds for it.
What comes back
A pass or fail result, returned in real time.
- Liveness result
- Pass or fail.
Every result is filed with a timestamped audit record.
| Outcome | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pass | The capture passed the liveness test. It speaks to presence, not identity. |
| Fail | The capture did not pass the liveness test. Treat it as a reason to look again, not as a finding about the person. |
Where it fits in your compliance programme
Where your Risk Management and Compliance Programme requires additional steps for a customer you do not meet in person, a liveness pass is evidence that a person, not an image, was on the other end of the flow. It is evidence of presence, not of identity: read it alongside the identity verifications, never instead of them.
Questions
What is the difference between Liveness Test and Facial Match?
The Liveness Test returns a pass or fail result on whether a living person completed the capture. Facial Match returns a probability that the face on camera matches the latest Home Affairs photograph for that ID number. They run together, with ID Verification, as one bundle.
Can a photograph pass a liveness test?
A photograph or a recording is what the test is built to detect. No liveness control is absolute, so read a pass as one input to your own assessment.
What happens to the liveness capture?
It is used for the verification and nothing else, and it is not used to build, train or improve any product. Veriflow does not keep a searchable index of faces, does not run one-to-many searches, and does not keep a facial template that could be used to recognise the person in a different business’s verification. The person being verified can read how their information is handled on our page for individuals.
How do I run the Liveness Test, and what does it cost?
It runs inside a flow, together with ID Verification and Facial Match. Run it from the portal, or through the API with a sandbox to build against (credentials on request). There is no public price list: book a demo and a specialist prepares a pricing proposal built around your volumes. You can pay as you go from a wallet or settle monthly on invoice.
About results
Veriflow will perform the Services with the reasonable skill and care of a competent provider of identity-verification services in South Africa. Veriflow transmits results sourced from third-party data sources, including registered South African credit bureaux, banks, official registers and published watchlists. Veriflow does not compile that underlying data, does not warrant its accuracy, completeness or currency, and gives no warranty that any verification result is correct.
A Result is an input to the Client's own assessment. Veriflow does not decide whether any person or entity is onboarded, declined, priced, offboarded, employed, granted credit or reported, and makes no recommendation as to any of those outcomes. Those decisions are made solely by the Client, on its own criteria and under its own legal obligations, and the Client must not use a Result as the sole basis for any adverse outcome affecting a person.
Every verification
People & identity
- ID Verification
- Facial Match
- Liveness Test
- Contact Verification
Business & compliance
Build the flow, not the verification
Tell us the journey you run and we will show you how it chains together.
Last updated .