Overview
IdLayer is a customer identity verification layer for Shopify. It lets merchants verify their customers at checkout — supporting identity, age, and NFC-based verification — and gives them a centralised log of every verification outcome in the Shopify Admin.
What it does
When a customer reaches checkout, IdLayer's Checkout UI Extension intercepts the purchase flow. The customer completes a quick verification on a hosted screen, and the result is communicated back to the checkout in near-real time. Verified customers can complete their purchase; others are held until they verify or a merchant manually approves them.
Merchants see every session — pending, approved, or declined — from a clean dashboard directly inside the Shopify Admin, with stored images and full audit data available for each session.
Key capabilities
- Checkout-embedded verification — no redirection away from your store; the extension lives inside Shopify Checkout
- Multiple verification types — identity document, age check, and NFC-based flows, configurable per store
- Real-time status — verification results update automatically; customers are unblocked the moment they pass
- Durable image storage — ID documents and selfies are copied to secure private storage, not reliant on expiring third-party URLs
- Manual controls — merchants can approve or decline any pending session from the Admin dashboard
- Customer tagging — verified customers are tagged
idlayer:verifiedautomatically for downstream segmentation or gating
How it works
IdLayer sits between three systems: Shopify Checkout, a third-party verification provider (Didit), and the merchant Admin.
| Layer | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Checkout UI Extension | Shows verification prompt; blocks checkout until result |
| Verification provider | Hosts the identity/age/NFC verification UI |
| IdLayer backend | Orchestrates sessions, stores results and images, webhooks |
| Admin app (Polaris) | Lets merchants review, approve, and audit sessions |
The architecture is designed so that merchants own their verification data. All session records and images are held in IdLayer's storage — independent of the third-party provider's data retention policies.
Use cases
IdLayer is particularly useful for stores that sell:
- Age-restricted goods — alcohol, tobacco, knives, adult content, vaping products
- High-value or regulated items — pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, financial products
- Identity-sensitive services — where knowing the customer's identity is a legal or contractual requirement
Note: IdLayer works on the Shopify Online Store sales channel. It requires Shopify Checkout and uses a Checkout UI Extension to embed the verification prompt.