47%
No-face-match
Share of suspected-fraud rejections in the source's Southern African technique breakdown for 2025.
40%
Spoofing
The source category includes presentation attacks, deepfake-assisted impersonation and face swaps.
Passive Liveness API
Check for live presence from one face photo
Add a passive liveness signal without asking the user to blink, speak or turn their head. Send a Base64-encoded face image and receive a status, score and review warnings.
No challenge step
Sandbox and production modes
API access
Example response
Liveness result
- Status
- Approved
- Method
- PASSIVE
- Score
- 92
- Warnings
- None
Route declined or uncertain results to review. A successful liveness result confirms a live-presence signal, not the person's identity.
What it does
One signal in a layered verification flow
Liveness
Assesses whether a submitted face capture appears to show a real, present person and returns signals for presentation risk and poor capture quality.
Not identity proof
It does not identify the person or prove that the face belongs to an ID holder. Add Face Match or ID verification when your decision requires those checks.
Fraud evidence
Impersonation pressure shows up in the capture
Published evidence points to identity spoofing across remote journeys. Passive liveness contributes a live-presence signal. Face Match, trusted capture, device context and transaction monitoring cover other parts of the risk.
>3,000
monthly deepfake attempts
Recorded across the source's African network by the end of 2025.
97,975
digital banking fraud incidents
SABRIC's South African bank data for 2024, up 86%. Gross losses reached R1.888 billion, up 74%.
Evidence boundary: the 2026 Africa report describes rejected checks and attack traffic in its vendor network. SABRIC covers bank-reported digital fraud across South African banking channels. VerifyNow detection accuracy requires a dedicated measured test and sits outside these figures.
API workflow
Add liveness in three steps
01
Capture
Collect one clear, front-facing face photo with the user’s knowledge and a defined purpose.
02
Check
Send the image as Base64 JSON to the Passive Liveness endpoint with your API key.
03
Decide
Use the returned status, score and warnings in your own approval or manual-review rules.
Use cases
Where passive liveness fits
Remote onboarding
Add a live-presence signal before you accept a selfie in an account-opening flow.
Account recovery
Check a fresh face capture before moving a high-risk recovery request to the next step.
Age-gated journeys
Use passive liveness with age estimation or ID-backed age verification, depending on the assurance required.
Compliance context
Use liveness where your risk requires it
The FIC Act does not prescribe passive or active liveness. Accountable institutions must choose risk-based identity verification controls under their RMCP. Liveness can support those controls, but it does not replace customer identification or verification.
Facial biometric information is special personal information under POPIA. Your organisation remains responsible for a lawful basis, clear notices, appropriate security, purpose limitation and retention rules for the images and results it processes.
FAQ
Passive liveness questions
Which liveness method does VerifyNow offer?
VerifyNow offers Passive Liveness from one face photo. The user can submit the capture without blinking, speaking or turning their head. Active liveness is a different capture method.
What evidence does Passive Liveness return?
Passive Liveness assesses whether the submitted capture appears live. Add Face Match to compare the person with a trusted reference photo, then add an identity check when the workflow needs verified identity details. This separates the liveness result from the evidence used to prove identity.
How does Passive Liveness fit a FICA risk-based process?
The FIC Act does not require a specific liveness check. Accountable institutions choose risk-based identification and verification controls under their RMCP. Passive Liveness can support that control environment where impersonation or presentation attacks are a relevant risk.
Does Age Estimation include a liveness signal?
Yes. VerifyNow Age Estimation returns an age estimate together with a passive-liveness method and score from the same face photo. In that workflow, you do not need to call the standalone Passive Liveness endpoint again.
Which image files can I submit?
Submit one JPG/JPEG, PNG, WEBP or TIFF face photo, up to 5 MB.
Add passive liveness to your onboarding flow
Start in sandbox, review the response contract, then move to production when your approval and manual-review rules are ready.
Related checks