SSN Verification
What is an SSN?
A Social Security Number (SSN) is a kind of tax identification number (TIN) for a person that is used by the Social Security Administration and other government agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). While SSNs were designed to be unique, there have been rare instances of duplicate assignments. A SSN is assigned at birth, or during the immigration process. Enigma also verifies Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) against submitted persons.
For information on how to verify a EIN/TIN against a submitted business name, please see the TIN Verification task.
SSN Verification
Verifying that an SSN and name combination matches IRS records is a common step in many Know Your Business (KYB) workflows. For example, you may want to verify that the SSN that an Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) has supplied is in fact their own. When you request SSN verification, Enigma will verify that the SSN is valid and that it matches the person’s name submitted.
The SSN should be passed to the KYB API as a 9-digit string.
The ssn_verification task can return any of the following responses:
| Status | Result | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Success | ssn_verified | SSN and last name combination match IRS records |
| Failure | ssn_invalid | Invalid SSN |
| Failure | not_completed | IRS is unavailable |
| Failure | SSN_not_verified | SSN and Name combination does not match IRS records |
| Failure | SSN_not_verified | SSN entered is not currently issued |
How to Handle a "Failure" Response
If a failure status is returned, then the you will need to retry SSN verification.
Before retrying, we recommend that you confirm the SSN is correct.
In the event of an IRS availability error, keep in mind the IRS can be down for a few minutes to several hours at a time.
Check the KYB Tasks status on Enigma status page for the latest status of this task.
If retrying is not ideal or continues to be unsuccessful, the client can request documents, like their SSN card or a tax document, from the person to verify the SSN.
Gaining Access to the SSN Verification Task
The SSN verification task is an optional add-on that is not included in a package.
Please contact us to have it added to your account.
Once the task has been added to your account, you can retrieve it by passing ssn_verification in the attrs parameter and passing a 9-digit string in the ssn field.