ID card OCR: read both sides of a national identity card and get the data back

An identity card is harder to read than a passport: two sides, a three line MRZ (TD1 format) on the back when there is one, an address, a card number and a personal number that differ, and dozens of national designs. Koncile's ID card OCR takes both sides in one request and returns the fields, the MRZ lines and a fraud score from 0 to 100. What it does not do: prove that the person holding the card is its owner.

What the ID card OCR returns

Both sides in one request

Send the front and the back as two images, or a PDF with both, in the same call. Koncile identifies which side is which, reads each one, and merges the result into a single record. A card sent with the front only is read from the front, and the response says that the back is missing. For the API details, see the passport OCR API page: the request is the same, with the ID card template.

With or without an MRZ

Most national cards issued since the 2010s carry a three line MRZ on the back (the TD1 format of ICAO 9303, detailed in our guide to the ID card MRZ): the new French CNI, the German Personalausweis, the Italian CIE, the Spanish DNI, the Belgian eID and most European cards. Older cards, and cards from some countries, have no MRZ at all. Koncile reads both cases: with an MRZ, the printed fields are compared with it and the check digits are recomputed; without, the printed fields alone are read and the fraud controls rely on the file and the image.

What the three lines contain, and how they differ from a passport's two lines, is explained in MRZ OCR.

Controls on an ID card

• MRZ against printed fields: surname, document number, birth date and expiry date must match; a mismatch raises the score.
• Check digits: document number, birth date, expiry date and the composite check digit are recomputed on the MRZ.
• Expiry: the expiry date is checked against the day of analysis.
• File forensics on PDFs: metadata, producer, incremental saves, fonts foreign to the issuer's.
• Photo controls on scans and photos: retouching and AI generated areas detected by Koncile's own models (K-Detect).
• Score from 0 to 100 with its signals: 0 to 39, 40 to 79, 80 and above. A score is a signal to verify, not an accusation.

The limit, said plainly: a scan of a physical forgery made with care can pass the file controls, and a genuine card photographed under a lamp can get a middle score. Chip reading (the NFC chip of recent cards), face match and liveness are not part of the service.

Which cards

European national identity cards (France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal and the others), residence permits in the same TD1 format, and cards from other countries with or without an MRZ. Koncile does not depend on a per country template list: fields are read from the document. Non Latin scripts are read and transliterated when the MRZ gives the Latin form.

Where ID card OCR is used

• Customer onboarding in banks, lenders, brokers, fintechs and insurers, where KYC OCR reads the whole file: the card fills the customer record and only doubtful files reach an analyst.
• Claims and contracts: the card arrives with the IBAN and the proof of address; one tool reads the whole file.
• Employment, rental, hospitality, telecom: identity captured at a counter or in a form, expiry checked, data exported to the business system. At a front desk, the trade offs between a dedicated hotel ID scanner, a tablet and online check in are set out in our guide to the hotel ID scanner.

Pricing

20 free credits at signup, no card. Then from €199 per month for 1,000 credits (1 credit per page for an extraction, 2 per page for a fraud analysis; a two sided card is two pages). Prices on koncile.ai.