Every accepted verification has passed every applicable check. Kayle treats document authenticity, chip authenticity, and biometric match as independent gates: any single failure is a hard reject.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.kayle.id/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
The checks
MRZ parse (DG1)
The Machine-Readable Zone is parsed from DG1 of the chip. Date-of-birth centuries are inferred against the document’s expiry where the two-digit year is ambiguous, so children with long-dated passports are handled correctly.
Passive authentication (SOD)
The Security Object Document is a CMS
SignedData structure containing the SHA-256 hash of every data group on the chip. Kayle verifies the CMS signature against the Document Signer Certificate (DSC) embedded in the SOD, then walks the chain to a Country Signing CA (CSCA) trusted by the ICAO PKD snapshot in the trust store. Each data group’s hash must match what the SOD declares.CRL revocation
The DSC is checked against the Certificate Revocation Lists for its issuing CSCA. The status is one of:
verified_not_revoked— fresh CRL coverage, certificate not on the list.revoked— the certificate is on a CRL. Hard reject.revocation_unknown— CRL coverage is missing or stale. Treated conservatively in production.
Active authentication (DG15)
If the document carries a DG15, the chip signs a freshly derived challenge with its private key. The challenge is bound to the attempt ID so the same signature can’t be replayed. A successful signature proves the chip is the same one personalised at issuance — a clone holding only the public data groups would fail this step.
Chip authentication (DG14)
If the document carries a DG14, the chip and reader run an authenticated key agreement (CA-v1 or CA-v2). The transcript binds the rest of the session to the genuine chip.
Face match
The on-chip portrait (DG2) is sent to the face matcher service alongside the user’s selfie frames. The threshold is derived from the document holder’s age — children, who change quickly, are matched more leniently than adults. The face matcher is fail-closed: an unavailable matcher rejects, and a fallback decision is rejected in production even if the score looks fine.
Failure codes
When an attempt is rejected, the webhook payload’sdata.failure_code tells you which gate failed:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
passport_authenticity_failed | Passive auth failed — the SOD signature, the DSC chain, a data-group hash, or CRL revocation rejected the document. |
passport_active_authentication_failed | DG15 was present and the chip’s signature over the challenge did not verify. |
passport_chip_authentication_failed | DG14 was present and the authenticated key agreement transcript did not verify. |
selfie_face_mismatch | The face matcher rejected the selfie against the on-chip portrait. |
session_expired | The session ran past its 60-minute window before this attempt could finish. |
session_cancelled | The session was cancelled while this attempt was in progress. |
verification.attempt.failed. The last two surface on attempts inside expired or cancelled sessions; you’ll usually receive the corresponding session-level event (verification.session.expired / verification.session.cancelled) at the same time.