Prepare once, pass once

The files to capture

• Photo ID — all four corners, both sides if the document has information on the back, unexpired.
• A recent proof of address — inside the window the operator states, in your own name.
• Payment ownership — a statement line, or a screenshot with only the last four digits visible.
• Source of funds, if asked — the exact period requested, credits visible.
• Source of wealth, if asked — one official document that covers the whole story rather than five partial ones.
• The device you opened the account on, for the liveness step.

How to capture them so they pass

• Daylight, indirect, phone directly above the page — not at an angle and not with the flash.
• Plain dark surface underneath, nothing written on it.
• Full page in frame for a bill or statement; full document in frame for an ID.
• Sharp enough to zoom to the date of birth, the name and the address without blurring.
• Colour, not black and white; a scanner is fine for paper, but an ID photograph should stay a real photograph.
• One document per file, named after the check it answers.

What to mask, and what never to send

Masking is not cheating when it is aimed at what the check does not need. Cover the unrelated lines on a statement, cover all but the last four digits of a card, cover a national identity number that is not being verified — and leave untouched every field the check reads: the name, the address, the date, the expiry, the document number.

Four things are never worth sending, whatever is asked: a full card number with its security code, a selfie holding more than one document at once, a document belonging to another person presented as your own, and a file through an email link or a chat message that arrived before you opened your own account. If a request looks like any of those, verify it inside the account first.

Storing what you will need again

Keep the untouched originals in one folder, with a note of the date each check was answered. Verification lapses: a dormancy, a new card, a name change, a large win or a licence change can re-open it, and the second pass is much faster when the same file is still on hand.

Where that folder lives matters, because it is a folder full of your identity. A local, encrypted location you control is a better home than a photo library that syncs to every device you own. And when an operator requests a document, send it through the upload inside your own account rather than by email, whichever address the message came from — the request and the response then live in the same record, which is exactly what a complaint needs later.

Once the files are ready, the documents page explains what each one proves, and timelines says what a realistic wait looks like afterwards.