ID Bolt: How We Made ID Scanning Easy (For Everyone)

Five years ago, putting responsibility for ID checks onto customers was unheard of. Manual data entry and obscure compliance requirements made it a risky – or impossible – proposition.

These days, though, businesses are seeing expectations for self-service rise in every area – with customers quickly switching to competitors if they provide more convenience.

Do your identity-checking processes reflect this new reality? Or are your customers still manually typing in passport information at online check-in, or your sales agents entering drivers’ license information at the car hire desk?

With today’s launch of ID Bolt, we’re making ID checks smarter, easier and up to today’s expectations for self-service. It allows you to embed a fast, accurate and easy-to-use self-scanning user journey into any website or web service using JavaScript.

ID Bolt is backed up by Scandit’s industry-leading ID scanning technology and can be used by your customers on their own smartphones, laptops or desktops. No ID images are uploaded into the cloud, and all decoding happens on-device for a smooth, secure user experience.

What Apple Pay or Google Pay is to online payments, ID Bolt is to ID checks. We designed its components to be ready to go in just a few lines of code, the user journey to be foolproof, and its workflows to be built and maintained by us, worry-free.

ID Bolt’s immediate value is a drastic reduction in the friction between you and your customers when checking identity data. If you’ve ever checked in a family for a flight online, you’ll know that typing out four, five or six sets of passport details is pretty tedious. Wouldn’t it be better to be able to scan them quickly instead?

“Passengers have made it clear: they want to spend less time booking and move through the airport faster.”

Nick Careen, IATA’s Senior Vice President for Operations, Safety and Security in IATA’s 2023 Global Passenger Survey.

This becomes a win-win for both passengers and carriers. Passengers get a smoother online check-in experience. Because of that, more passengers choose to check in online – which means more people arrive at the airport “ready to fly”. Queues are reduced, and airlines can reduce the costs of passenger support.

Ready to go: Secure ID scans in 1 second

Our product and engineering team has put a huge amount of research and effort into ensuring ID Bolt not only scans fast and accurately, but fits easily into business operations and meets modern user expectations.

As a pre-built solution, the entire ID scanning process is already set up and ready to be inserted into any web-based workflow. This includes features such as:

• Scan times of 1 second, making the identity verification process that much faster.
• Industry-leading accuracy rates, with 100% accuracy for PDF417 barcodes (U.S. driver’s licenses and state IDs) and 98% accuracy for Machine Readable Zones (all passports).
• Best-in-class user experience built upon hundreds of Scandit ID scanning implementations around the world, with tens of millions of ID scans performed every year.
• Video-stream ID capture for a faster scanning experience that does not require manual image capture or incur delays from uploading images.
• Secure data capture with on-device processing that does not require Scandit to send or store Personal Identifiable Information (PII). Following our approach to security, all other data communications are end-to-end encrypted.

Similarly to Stripe, Apple Pay, and the like, Scandit maintains ID Bolt’s components and user journeys. You never have to worry about the implementation details of ID scanning or error handling – just integrate it seamlessly into your overall customer experience.

Just scan a QR code to switch from desktop to mobile ID scanning

One feature about ID Bolt I particularly like is something we call a device handover. If you’ve ever tried to capture a document by holding it up to your computer’s webcam and getting it in focus, you know the process is awkward and annoying.

With ID Bolt, desktop or laptop users can scan a QR code with their smartphone to temporarily activate it as an ID scanner, for better ergonomics.

Want to see how device handover works and whether it really makes a difference? Try our ID Bolt interactive demo to test it for yourself.

ID Bolt in action

We all know that frictionless self-serve customer experiences (CX) are at the heart of customer satisfaction. At the same time, every legal and compliance team needs their business to check IDs consistently and thoroughly to meet regulations.

Another thing that’s effective about ID Bolt is that it not only enables you to balance legal and compliance requirements with great customer experience, but increases data accuracy by eliminating error-prone manual entry.

Here are just three of the use cases we think it will transform. We’re sure there will be many more.

Travel

With ID Bolt embedded on an operator’s website, passengers can scan their IDs to supply Advance Passenger Information (API) data. It’s a fast, frustration-free workflow on their own smart device for the customer, and enables operators to comply with regulations such as ETIAS.

“[Cruise] passengers of all generations both want and use the self-service aspect of the digital channel to address their needs throughout the journey”.

Deloitte

Car rentals

During the booking process for car rentals, ID Bolt allows rental companies to request driver’s license information before customers arrive at the pick-up point. Customers can also scan their own IDs to streamline onboarding and reduce queues, or get 24/7 vehicle access by scanning their license to retrieve car keys from self-service kiosks.

E-commerce checkout

With ID Bolt, online retailers can request users to scan their ID to prove their age when buying age-restricted goods such as alcohol, tobacco and medication. This reduces the chance of a driver not being able to drop off a delivery, and allows the retailer to ensure the ID presented at delivery matches – all creating safer and smoother operations.

Open up new opportunities with ID Bolt

ID Bolt’s future potential lies in the way it unlocks new self-serve channels. Allowing customers to meet your business on their terms, in ways that are accessible and convenient, opens revenue opportunities without compromising your compliance with identity-based regulations.

Think of a car-sharing service using ID Bolt to safeguard access to vehicles, or gaming platforms embedding age verification for mature games.

Interested in what could happen if you added fast, intuitive ID scanning to your website? The ID Bolt product page has more information about features, integration, and use cases.