Welcome to a practical Zapier tutorial! In this guide, we'll set up the second part of automated identity verification for your marketplace.
This Zap is useful if you want to set up identity verification on your marketplace. For example, you may be creating a car rental, nanny service, premium product, or any other marketplace and want to verify the identity of your users to create trust on the marketplace. This Zap is only half of the equation: there is a tutorial for a companion Zap that starts the identity verification process.
About Zapier
Zapier is a powerful and versatile tool for integrating different tools into your marketplace. You can learn more about Zapier in our introductory article or through this brief video from Zapier.
If you haven’t read the introduction and the action/event Zapier articles, we encourage you to do so to better understand how Zapier works. But if you want to dive straight into action, feel free to read on!
What you need for this tutorial
External accounts
Zapier Account
Create a Zapier account if you don’t already have one. You can sign up at www.zapier.com.
During registration, Zapier may ask which apps you plan to use. You can enter Sharetribe at this point or add it later.
iDenfy account
This is for setting up identity verification. There is a 7 day free trial, after which you need to subscribe to one of the paid plans.
How to set up your marketplace
Your marketplace must be configured in a certain way to support this Zap. Here is how you should set things up:
Set up access control
This setting depends on what you want the identity verification to achieve. Joining the marketplace, creating listings, initiating transactions? You decide.
Recently completed ID verification process
You'll need a finished ID verification process to proceed with tutorial
If you haven't created the first Zap for setting up identity verification, go ahead and do it now!
With these pieces in place, let's get started!
Note: The identity verification testing process will check the name on your ID and if it matches your first and last names on the marketplace, so make sure they are correct (and match your real life ID) for the test account.
Getting your Integration API key from Console
You'll need Integration API keys to connect your Sharetribe marketplace to Zapier.
Navigate to Build > Advanced > Applications.
Click on "+ Add a new application".
Give the application a descriptive name (like Zapier), and select "Integration API".
Click "Add application".
Important: Copy and paste the Client ID and Client secret to a safe place, like a password manager.
IMPORTANT: Think of the Client ID and Secret as a sort of a password to your marketplace that can be used to access your marketplace data through other services. Note that you won’t be able to ever see the Client secret to this application again in the Console under any circumstances. Make sure you copy it to a secure place. If you lose it, you will need to create a new application.
iDenfy and API keys
There is no need to get a separate set of API keys from iDenfy
When connecting Zapier to iDenfy, you will use the iDenfy username as the API key, and your iDenfy password as the API secret
Creating the Zap, step by step
(Optional) Importing the Zap template
Go to www.zapier.com and log in with your account (or create a free one if you don't already have one).
Click on "Try this Zap."
Step 1: New identity verification trigger
Create a trigger with the iDenfy application. As the Event, choose 'KYC - New Identity Verification (Polling)'
Connect your account. Use your iDenfy username and your iDenfy password.
Test your trigger. Make sure it finds a recently successfully completed identity verification from the iDenfy system
If it didn't, go ahead and follow the steps in the first tutorial, and complete the identity verification process
Step 2: Get the data related to the identification
Use the iDenfy Zapier app for this action step
In the setup section, select 'KYC - Get Identification' as the action step
In the configure section, go to the field 'Identification identifier' and click on the Plus + sign on the right. Choose the line that begins with "1. ID: " and has a long string of letters and numbers.
In the 'Successful if no search results are found?' step, select 'False: step run status is "stopped: halted".
In the 'If multiple search results are found', choose "Return first search result".
Test the action step. In the 'Data out' section, you should get detailed information about the identity document you used in the first Zap to go through the identity verification process.
Check that the field 'Overall status' exists and says 'APPROVED' (assuming your test identity verification was approved)
Further, check that the 'Technical Client ID' field exists, and matches the User ID of the to-be approved user of your marketplace. You can check this from the Sharetribe Console.
Note that with custom user fields that are required on signup, you can use all of the information from this step (for example some documents include birth date, gender, etc.) to verify the user in question, but in this tutorial, we'll just go with the name.
Step 3: Get user data
Now, we get more data about the user account based on the User ID found in the previous step.
Choose Sharetribe as the app for this action step
Select 'Show User' as the Action event
Make sure that the right Sharetribe account is connected (especially if you have used Zapier both in your Test and Live environments)
In the 'Configure' section, go to the 'User ID' field, click Plus +, and select the entry that starts with "2. Technical Client Id: " and has a long string of letters and numbers.
Leave the other fields empty/default.
Test the step. Make sure it finds the relevant information of the right user from your Sharetribe marketplace. This information includes, crucially, the 'User Profile First Name' and 'User Profile Last Name', which we will use to conduct the identity verification. It will also include, for example, the User Type of the user and other details gathered from the User Fields on signup.
Step 4: Filter the event
We only want to continue the process if the ID verification is approved, and their marketplace name matches the name on the ID.
Choose 'Filter by Zapier' as the app for this action step.
In the 'Configure & test' section, set the following three fields.
Only continue if:
2. Last Name
(Text) Exactly matches
3. User Profile Last Name:
And
2. First Name
(Text) Contains
3. User Profile First Name:
And
2. Overall status
(Text) Exactly matches
APPROVED
Test the step, and make sure it says 'Your Zap would have continue for this test data'.
Note that we select 'Contains' for the relationship between the first name on the document and user profile first name, since quite often people use only one first name on their marketplace account, but their ID can have middle names in it that fall under the 'First name' output.
Step 5: Approve the user (or grant them permissions)
In this tutorial, we assume that the identity verification is used to approve users to join the marketplace. However, you can modify this step to grant them specific permissions instead, such as creating listings or doing transactions.
Choose Sharetribe as the app for this action step. Select "Approve user" as the action event.
In the 'Configure' section, go to the User ID field, click on Plus +, and choose "2. Technical Client Id: " from the list that appears.
Leave the other fields as default.
Test the step. Make sure it approves (or gives rights to) the right user.
Step 6 (optional): Send Email to the user about being approved
Choose Gmail (or any email app of your preference) as the app
In the 'Configure' section, find the 'To:' field, click the Plus + sign, and select "3. User Email:" as the value for this field
Fill in the other fields as needed. For example, in the subject line, you could write:
[Your marketplace name here]: Identity verification successful!
In the Body field, you could write:
Hello [2. First name on the document: ] [2. Last name on the document: ], and thank you for registering on our marketplace! This email was sent to you to confirm that your ID verification process was successful and your account has been approved. You can now post listings and make transactions on the marketplace. Welcome! - Your Marketplace Team
Test the step, and make sure you receive the confirmation email. That's it! The account is now approved and the user has been notified via email about the approval.
Final thoughts
Thanks for reading this tutorial about creating a Zap for approving a marketplace user based on a successful identity verification process!
Learn more about the Sharetribe-Zapier integration or review all our Zapier templates for automating marketplace workflows.
Feel free to also check out the first part of this Zapier tutorial again, if needed.
Please get in touch with us from your Console or from the bottom right section of this page from the chat widget if you have any questions about this guide, or anything else. We'll be happy to help!