Rental and property management
A borrowed licence, a doctored screenshot or an applicant you will never meet in person: ShieldID reads the government ID, matches the live face and proves a real person is there, so you know who you are actually renting to.
The problem, in your words
Rental applications move fast, and most of them happen without you ever standing across a desk from the applicant. Three patterns show up again and again.
The applicant is real, but the licence photo is a sibling's, a roommate's or a stranger's found online. A quick glance at a phone photo cannot catch this. A live face match against the document portrait can.
Real fields stitched onto a fake card, or a genuine document edited in an image tool. Barcode, MRZ and printed-field cross-checks and a document tamper score catch what a human skim misses.
Out-of-province applicants, relocation tenants, corporate leases signed by an assistant. You are approving someone you have never met and may never meet, on the strength of a PDF.
A worked example
Maple Grove Rentals is a fictional five-building portfolio in the GTA. Its applications close remotely. Here is one, start to finish.
What matters most for this
Every check below runs on every verification. None of it is a paid extra you can decline to save money and quietly carry a hole in the file.
For disputes and audits
A verification without a record is just an opinion. Every action around a ShieldID verification is entered in an append-only Activity Ledger, enforced by the database: entries can be added, never edited or deleted.
How it fits your workflow
Pick the one that matches how you already run applications.
Email or text a verification link with an application, or show a QR code at a showing. The applicant's phone does the capturing; your desktop never needs a camera.
One REST API for a portfolio management system or a custom applicant portal: create a session, send the link, receive a signed webhook when the result is in. Sandbox sessions are never billed.
If you already screen applicants on RentKey, this is already running underneath it. ShieldID is the identity layer RentKey's tenant screening is built on.
Privacy and consent
This is background, not legal advice. Rules on what a landlord may collect, and for how long, vary by province and by use. Check your own counsel and your provincial tenancy rules before you set a policy.
How this compares
Categories, not vendor names. "Typical enterprise IDV" describes what we found across the identity-verification market broadly; your mileage will vary by vendor.
| Capability | ShieldID | Typical enterprise IDV | Manual checks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confirms the ID itself is genuine (barcode and printed page cross-checked) | Yes | Usually | No |
| Confirms the applicant is the person in the photo, live | Yes | Usually | No |
| Works for an applicant you will never meet in person | Yes | Usually | No |
| Reads an unfamiliar document instead of refusing it outright | Yes | Rarely | Depends on staff |
| Leaves a searchable record if a decision is ever disputed | Yes | Not offered to the customer | A filing cabinet, maybe |
| Applicant's ID purged automatically on a timer | Yes | Rarely stated | Whoever remembers to delete it |
Objections, answered
Straight answers, including where we do not have one yet.
It depends on your province and what you are using it for. This page is not legal advice — check your provincial tenancy rules and your own counsel before you set a policy. ShieldID gives you the verification tool; the policy is yours to set.
The check runs on the applicant's own phone in a few minutes, whenever suits them, not in your office. Sandbox sessions are free, so you can try the flow yourself before you send it to anyone.
ShieldID reads whatever it can from any document and reports each field's own verdict instead of rejecting the whole thing because the layout is unfamiliar — the same evidence, whatever ID a genuine applicant happens to hold.
No. ShieldID is the identity layer RentKey's tenant screening already runs on. If you use RentKey, this is already part of your workflow.
It is purged automatically on a short timer, seven days by default. The Activity Ledger entry describing the check outlives the image.
What you see
The applicant verifies from the link in their application. Before a lease goes out, you see every field that was read and a verdict for each check.
Questions
Verify your next applicant
Try it in the sandbox first, on your own phone, at no cost. Sandbox sessions are never billed.
Prefer a ready-made screening flow? RentKey runs on ShieldID out of the box.