Verification tiers
Approve more real businesses, catch fake ones sooner.
A fraudster can pass your standard KYB check. Verification tiers surface the independent, hard-to-fake signals that help you approve more.
The problem with pass/fail
A five-year business and a week-old shell look the same.
Registered only
Lakemont Distribution LLC
Filed 2025 · Delaware
- Secretary of StateActive
- EINNo signal
- Additional government recordsNo signal
- Operating locationNo signal
- Revenue & transaction activityNo signal
- Web presenceNo signal
- Review historyNo signal
Registry-only check
Clears it. Nothing else corroborates.
Pass
One signal
Registered and real
Cedarline Coffee Roasters, LLC
Resolved · Chattanooga, TN · Registered 2009
- Secretary of StateActive · address & name verified
- EINEIN 32-8675309
- Additional government recordsBusiness license on file
- Operating location1208 Market St + 4 more
- Revenue & transaction activity3,000 daily customers
- Web presencecedarlinecoffee.com
- Review historyActive across platforms
Verification tier
Corroborated by multiple independent sources
Tier 3
High
Both clear a registry-only check. The independent evidence tells them apart.
Businesses shown are illustrative.
Graded, not binary
Three tiers, by how little the applicant controls.
Each tier is a claim about the evidence, not about the business. A decision engine can act on the strength of the proof rather than on a bare yes or no.
Verification tiers
Evidence graded low to high
A business can fake a record. It cannot fake agreement.
Every tier answers the same question — is this business real — with evidence the applicant has progressively less control over. The top tier is not more data. It is data that agrees.
- Card transactions
- Verified locations
- Review history
- Government records
Tier 1 · Low
Self-reported records: the registration and EIN a business files for itself. The market-standard check, and the floor every tier builds on.
- State registration
- EIN
Tier 2 · Moderate
One independent signal from outside the business: an active website, or a third-party review.
- Active website
- Third-party reviews
Tier 3 · High
Multiple independent, hard-to-fake signals, with time depth.
- Verified locations
- Total review count
- Card transactions
- Has government record
- Real review history
Before you wire it in
What teams ask first.
01
Coverage
The tier reflects the evidence available for a given business, drawn from independent sources across government records, operating locations, revenue and transaction activity, web presence, and review history.
02
Low or unknown tiers
A low tier is not an accusation. It means the independent evidence isn't there yet. Enigma reports an unknown signal as unknown, so a thin file never looks cleaner than it is.
03
Policy and integration
Augment what you run today by layering your own policy on top of the underlying signals — or replace it outright and use the tier itself as approve/decline logic.
04
Audit trail
Each verdict includes the criteria it met and the evidence behind each, so a decision can be explained later.