The Australian Government's Document Verification Service (DVS) has made the driver's license card number a mandatory field when verifying a driver's license.

The driver's license card number is unique to each new driver's license card that is issued. It is distinct from the driver's license number, which does not change when a new card is issued. The Australian Government says this change will help reduce identity fraud and impersonation by ensuring that only the most recently issued driver's license card can be used in a verification check.

Some of PassFort's data providers, such as Equifax Australia, use the Australian DVS to verify driver's licenses. Equifax say these changes are "particularly relevant for those affected by the Optus breach" in which some Australian driver's license numbers were exposed.

What's changed?

When an Australian driver's license is added via the PassFort portal, the card number can be added to the new driver's license card number field. When it's added via the API, the card number can be sent in the new issue_number field.

We pass the driver's license card number to the Equifax Australia integration as the driver's license card number. This improves automation rates for applications in PassFort when using Equifax Australia's IDMatrix.

Adding driver's license details using the PassFort portal

When PassFort collects document details, you've always been asked to enter a document number. For driver's licenses, this is the permanent driver's license number.

If you have chosen the option of adding an Australian driver's license, we will now also ask you to enter the driver's license number and the new driver's license card number.

Adding a driver's license using the PassFort API

We now accept an optional issue_number in the documents_metadata section of the PassFort API.

The driver's license card number should be provided in the new issue_number field. As before, the driver's license number should go in the number field.

For example:

"documents_metadata": [
  {
    "document_type": "DRIVERS_LICENSE",
    "country_code": "AUS",
    "number": "The driver's license number",
    "issue_number": "The driver's license card number", // the new optional field
    "issuing_state": "VIC"
  }
]

Limitations

• PassFort currently only supports this additional field for Australian driver's licenses.
• Only the Equifax Australia integration has been updated to make use of the new field.

What you need to do

If you process Australian driver's licenses using Equifax's PassFort integration, begin collecting the driver's license card number from your customers.

Enter these numbers in the driver's license card number field of the PassFort portal as shown above, or submit them in the issue_number field of the documents_metadata in the PassFort API.

You can find out more in the PassFort help docs and our API docs. If you have any questions, just get in touch with Support.

Clients using ComplyAdvantage can now opt to send them the PassFort customer reference field.

Customer reference is a profile field that lets you store an internal ID for your customer within PassFort. ComplyAdvantage refers to this field as the client reference. This reference can be used within the data provider’s own systems for actions such as searching, whitelisting, and tracking searches.

You can find out more in our help documentation.

Limitations

ComplyAdvantage only supports client reference fields that are:

• 255 characters or less
• Only contain the following character types:
  • Alphanumeric characters
  • Spaces
  • Hyphens
  • Underscores

PassFort does not update its customer reference if the corresponding client reference is updated in ComplyAdvantage, nor does PassFort backfill any missing customer reference entries that may be set in ComplyAdvantage.

How to configure

The Send customer reference checkbox must be enabled on the ComplyAdvantage data provider configuration screen.

If you’d like us to set this up for you, contact us.

Soon we will be releasing the ability to share saved filtered Views with all the other users in your institution. Views are combinations of filters, columns and sorting of the profiles list.

Please note, the ability to reorder filtered Views will be replaced by favouriting Views, which will appear at the top of the list in a new section. Your existing Views will be ordered alphabetically unless they are favourited.

Getting Started

When released, you will immediately be able to start sharing Views.

PassFort’s portal nows supports translations. We will be delivering new languages over the next few months, starting with French.

The planned next languages are:

• Next: German, Spanish
• Then: Italian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese

You can track progress in our roadmap portal here

How it works

A new dropdown button has been added to the header bar and it displays the current selected language.

When a language is selected for the first time, it is set as your preferred language and will remain set even if you log out.

PassFort’s portal will also detect the language your computer and browser are set to and will suggest the same language (if available) to switch.

Additional information

Find out more in our help site article here

Help site

The help site is also being translated to match the supported languages, these will be released over the next few months

Support

Our support process will continue to be in English

Out of scope

Note, some text isn't supported for translation such as:

• Fixed PassFort terms will remain in English, such as 'Policy Builder'
• User generated values (Custom fields, task/product/etc. titles)
• Check results and data returned by third party providers
• API documentation
• Notification emails

We’ve improved how company profiles are created in PassFort’s UI to help you create company profiles more easily.

You can now add the company’s address directly to the “Add new profile” dialog when you create the new company profile. This was previously only possible after the company had been created.

You can learn more about creating company profiles in our help documentation. If you have any questions, get in touch with Support.

API changes

Additionally, API users performing a company search will notice more data returned in the response. PassFort API users calling the /search/companies endpoint will notice these new fields in the response: number_label, addresses, contact, incorporation_date, structure_type, lei  and tax_ids. 

For some of PassFort’s newer integrations, users calling the /search endpoint will notice these same fields, plus the status field, returned for the Candidate type. You can find out more about this in our API documentation.

We’ve upgraded to the latest version of Onfido’s SDK (9.1.4) in Communicate forms.

The new version includes several bug fixes and improvements to the overall user experience.

The latest version also includes a requirement for your US customers to provide consent to ensure compliance with US laws on biometric data. Only those located in the US will be asked to provide their consent during the onboarding process. More information can be found in Onfido’s documentation.

You can now run ID verification (Service collects documents)checks using idbox as the data provider.

You can use idbox to verify documents by submitting them to the idbox portal. You can then view the check results in PassFort’s portal.

In order to run these checks, you need to have a direct agreement with idbox.

Contact us to get started or learn more about our idbox integration here.

On the week beginning 7 November, we’re upgrading to the latest version of Onfido’s SDK (9.1.2) in Communicate forms.

The new version includes several bug fixes and improvements to the overall user experience.

The latest version also includes a requirement for your US customers to provide consent to ensure compliance with US laws on biometric data. Only those located in the US will be asked to provide their consent during the onboarding process. More information can be found in Onfido’s documentation.

As part of our ongoing work to standardise and improve how verification lists work across all PassFort tasks, we have made some minor changes to the user interface of the Identify Shareholders task.

Associates in the check result list, on the left-hand side of the screen, are now grouped by role. In the verification list, on the right-hand side of the screen, associates can have multiple roles. If an associate has multiple roles they will no longer appear in the verification list multiple times. These associates will now appear once with multiple roles listed. You can also edit these roles.

You don’t need to take any action. We have updated the PassFort help site to reflect the new UI design. Please refer to the help documentation on editing company associates on a verification list, copying information from imported associates, removing or re-adding company associates from the verification list, and manually adding associates.

If you have any questions, contact Support.

We have updated the logo in PassFort to show that we are a part of the Moody’s family. We have made a small change to the header bar as this phase of the branding update. These changes are just a part of our branding alignment and won’t impact how you use PassFort.

In order to support these branding changes, we have also improved the look and feel of our help documentation at help.passfort.com. Our new Help site includes improved navigation features, more quicklinks and additional reference materials.