ID Plus – Advanced verification of Italian biometric identity cards

How to verify an Italian ID card online?

Many business or personnel processes require the presentation of proof of identity: recruitment, rentals, KYC processes, etc.

Nowadays, the pieces are usually scanned or photographed before being sent by email: therefore, it becomes complex to ensure that these pieces are authentic and have not been modified with image processing software such as Photoshop.

Are you unsure of the validity of an ID presented to you, or do you need to check the validity of an Italian ID as part of a business process?

Our product “ID Plus – Advanced verification of Italian biometric identity card validity” allows you to check the validity of your Italian biometric identity card by :

• analyzing online MRZ band information and security keys
• extracting the tax code encoded in the barcode on the card

And this in a few seconds!

How does the validity verification of the Italian biometric identity card work online?

How are the results of the advanced analysis of the validity of the Italian biometric identity card presented?

The results of the analysis are available for download from the history of the identity suite in PDF / JSON / XML format:

What document formats are accepted?

You can send your documents as jpg / jpeg / png images, or as PDF files.

Scans/photos don’t need to be cropped or retouched: they are automatically detected when the MRZ strip on the Italian biometric ID card is detected.

You can send the front and back of the part on the same scan in any order (front first and back underneath, or vice versa): they will be sorted and recognition will be trouble-free.

The same goes for inclination: scans may be a little tilted/misaligned: they will be recognized by our service!

Am I charged if the information is not extracted correctly from the MRZ strip Italian biometric ID card?

What is the bar code on Italian biometric identity cards?

Italian biometric identity cards feature a barcode in the center: this encodes the cardholder’s unique tax number, which can be found just above it under the heading “CODICE FISCALE”.

What is the Codice fiscale / Fiscal Code on Italian biometric identity cards?

The Italian Fiscal Code, officially known in Italy as Codice fiscale, is the Italian tax code, similar to the Social Security Number (SSN) in the United States or the National Insurance Number (NAN) in the United Kingdom.

This is a 16-character alphanumeric code. It is used to unambiguously identify individuals, regardless of their nationality or residence status.

Designed by and for the Italian tax authorities, it is now used for other purposes, such as uniquely identifying individuals participating in the healthcare system, or individuals acting as parties to private contracts. The code is issued by the Agenzia delle Entrate, the Italian tax authorities.

How is the Italian tax code / Codice fiscale constituted?

For individuals, the tax code is made up of 16 alphanumeric characters; for legal entities (e.g. companies), it is made up of 11 numeric characters.

It is made up as follows:

• First name (3 letters): first 3 consonants of first name
• Name (3 letters): first 3 consonants of the name
• Date of birth and gender (5 alphanumeric characters) :
  • 2-digit year of birth
  • Month of birth encoded on a letter (“A” for January and up to “T” for December)
  • Day of birth and gender: the day of birth (01 to 31), and if the person is female add 40 (e.g. 01 would be 41, and 31 would be 71).
• City of birth (4 alphanumeric characters): the Belfiore code is used as the codice catastale (civil status code). It consists of a letter, followed by three digits. Each Italian commune has its own code, generally determined in alphabetical order (for example, Abano Terme, in the province of Padua, the first Italian commune in alphabetical order, has the code A001). People born abroad have their own code according to their country of birth, all beginning with the letter Z (for example, code Z404 in the USA, code Z114 in the UK, code Z700 in Australia, etc.).
• Validation character (1 letter): one letter from A to Z

What is the MRZ strip (Italian Biometric Identity Zone) (Machine Readable Zone), or ZLA (Machine Readable Zone) strip?

A machine-readable zone, or machine-readable zone, is an area on an official document reserved for reading, identifying and validating the document.

For example, documents such as passports, national identity cards, residence permits and driving licenses can or must include an optical reading zone, depending on the country and version of the document.

It is located at the bottom of identity documents: it contains all the information on the document, with security keys to check that it is authentic and has not been altered.

The information it contains varies according to the type of document.

How is the MRZ Italian biometric identity card made up of?

Cards issued from 2021 onwards will feature three lines of text, each containing alphanumeric characters.

What data is extracted from an MRZ strip Italian biometric ID card?

The data extracted from the MRZ strip Italian biometric ID card are as follows:

• Front row:

1. Document Type : 2 characters, code indicating the type of document, represented by the letters “C< “.
2. Issuing Country : 3 characters, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code of the issuing country.
3. Card number : 9 characters, unique card number.
4. Control key: 1 character, control key for the card’s unique number.
5. End of line : ” < ” to complete the line.

• Second line:

1. Date of birth : 6 characters, year, month and day of birth in YYMMDD format.
2. Control key: 1 character, control key for date of birth.
3. Gender : 1 character, “M” for a man, “F” for a woman.
4. Expiry date: 6 digits, card expiry date in YYMMDD format.
5. Control key: 1 character, expiry date control key.
6. Country code : 3 characters, ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code of the holder’s nationality.
7. End of line : 11 characters, chevrons to complete the line.
8. Control key: 1 character, control key for concatenation of characters line 1 6-15, line 2 1-7, line 2 9-15.

• Third line:

1. Holder’s surname and first names: holder’s surname and first names, beginning with the family name followed by the first name. The surname and first name are separated by two characters. <. In the case of a compound surname, a compound given name or several given names, they are separated by the character <. Spaces and apostrophes are replaced by the character < and the name is truncated to 30 characters if necessary, and any accents on the letters are removed. The line is then completed with the <.