Dealer fraud reduction identity verification
Document capture, liveness, face match, and mDL. Signed webhook returns a verified identity assertion.
Capabilities
Identity verification across the dealer's three highest-fraud-exposure surfaces
Test-drive identity verification
Government-issued ID captured in-session before the test drive begins. OCR + barcode cross-reference confirms the credential is real; liveness + face match confirms the human holding it is the document's owner. Defeats the most common test-drive-theft pattern: a fake or stolen ID handed over at the dealership desk that turns out to be unverifiable when the vehicle doesn't return.
Liveness + face match for financing applications
Synthetic-identity fraud — fabricated or composite identities used in auto-loan applications — is one of the highest-loss fraud patterns auto dealers face. Stile's liveness + face match against the document portrait at financing-application start catches the synthetic-identity pattern at the earliest possible moment in the deal flow, before the credit pull commits.
Curbstoner identification at intake
Curbstoning — unlicensed sellers presenting themselves as private parties to evade dealer regulation — sits between marketplaces and dealers. Stile's identity assertion at intake produces the audit pointer the dealer's compliance team uses to flag repeat sellers across multiple transactions, which is the canonical curbstoner signature.
How a test-drive verification flows
The default trigger is before the test drive begins; dealers with higher exposure (luxury, exotic, performance) configure additional re-verification at financing-application or wholesale-transaction milestones.
- Step 01
1. Test-drive request
Customer requests a test drive at the dealership desk or via the dealer's website. The dealer's onboarding system invokes Stile via SDK (in-product) or external link (SMS / email).
- Step 02
2. Capture + verify
Government ID captured in-session, selfie captured for liveness + face match. OCR + barcode cross-reference for physical credentials; ISO/IEC 18013-5 signature verification for mDL where the issuing state has shipped wallet credentials.
- Step 03
3. Signed assertion
Signed webhook fires with the eligibility decision, jurisdiction, and audit pointer. The verification-result API exposes the full identity assertion the dealer's deal-management system reads to populate the customer record.
- Step 04
4. Test-drive decision
The dealer's salesperson combines the Stile assertion with whatever else the dealer's compliance configuration calls for (driver's-licence-status check via the issuing state's DMV, prior-customer history) to clear or hold the test drive. Stile does not make the test-drive decision — it provides the identity primitive the salesperson and compliance team consume.
Dealer scenarios + Stile coverage
The verification scenarios auto dealers most commonly trigger Stile against. Each scenario is configured independently — different trigger surface, different threshold, different release attribute set.
| Dealer scenario | What Stile verifies | Audit-trail shape |
|---|---|---|
| Test-drive request (walk-in or online) | Government ID + liveness + face match | Per-test-drive identity primary key for the dealer's customer record |
| Test-drive of high-value vehicle (luxury / exotic) | Fresh session at dealer-configured value threshold | High-value-vehicle audit pointer chained to the customer record |
| Financing application start | Fresh session against the customer's prior identity | Financing-application audit pointer chained to the customer's deal record |
| Trade-in vehicle intake | Government ID + liveness + face match | Per-intake identity primary key the dealer's compliance team flags against |
| Repeat-seller flagging (curbstoner pattern) | Cross-reference of audit pointers across multiple intakes | Pattern of audit-pointer matches across separate transactions for the dealer's compliance review |
| Dealer-to-dealer wholesale transaction | Government ID for the principal on each side | Per-transaction identity primary key for both sides of the wholesale record |
Auto dealers carry significant financial and inventory exposure across three distinct fraud surfaces: test-drive theft, financing fraud, and curbstoner intake. The identity-verification step is the dealer's first defence on each. Stile contributes the verification primitive; the dealer's separate sources — driver's-licence-status checks via the issuing state's DMV, credit pulls, prior-customer history — combine with the identity primitive to produce the full deal record. Related coverage:
Identity verification — the underlying identity-attribute case for dealer customer onboarding.
Digital ID verification — mDL deep dive. Several state DMVs have shipped mDL credentials that dealers can accept at the desk; the underlying signed assertion shape is identical across physical and mobile credentials.
Automotive — sibling vertical (vehicle-marketplace buyer / seller verification).
FAQ
Dealer verification — buyer questions
No. Stile produces the identity-of-record assertion — that the human holding the licence is the licence's owner. The licence-status check (issuing state, expiration, suspension status) is a separate operator-side query the dealer's existing process already runs against the issuing state's DMV records. The two are complementary: the DMV query confirms the licence is valid; Stile confirms the human presenting it is the licence's owner.
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