How Airbnb verifies trust in 200+ countries with Incode
A two-sided marketplace runs on strangers trusting each other. Identity is the control that makes that trust safe to extend for hosts and guests, in every market Airbnb operates in.
countries and regions where Airbnb extends verified trust
OCR accuracy reading the name and key fields from an ID
of fraudulent identities stopped before a booking
accuracy when redacting sensitive data
A marketplace built on strangers trusting each other
Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace with hosts and guests all over the world.
Its product is trust between strangers, extended safely in every market it operates in, and Airbnb requires identity verification of hosts and guests alike.
Trust between strangers, at global scale
A guest hands over payment and personal details; a host hands over the keys to their home. Identity verification is the control that makes that trust safe to extend.
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When identity fails, the cost lands everywhere
Chargebacks and payment fraud, fake or hijacked listings, account takeover of real hosts, and, most seriously, safety incidents when someone is not who they claimed to be. Each is expensive in refunds and support, and far more so in trust.
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The document could be anything, from anywhere
The check has to read the name off an identity document across a wide range of languages and scripts. Names transliterate differently, name order varies by country, and non-Latin characters defeat naive systems.
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Required on every booking
Airbnb requires identity verification of hosts and guests on every booking, so verification has to hold at marketplace scale without slowing bookings down.
Verification at the front door is the cheapest place to stop fraud, and everything downstream rests on reading the name right.
Identify legitimate guests in every language
Incode's government-ID verification reads identity accurately across Airbnb's markets, starting with the hardest part: the name.
Read the name off the ID
Identity Verification
OCR reads the name and key fields straight from the ID with 99.9%+ accuracy, in native scripts, across a large number of countries and ID types, and returns them for Airbnb to use and map to the profile.
Accurate on both sides of a booking
The same check protects hosts and guests alike, catching identity fraud and forged documents before they reach the other party. Verification is accurate enough to trust and light enough that legitimate users finish rather than abandon a booking.
Private by design
Incode redacts sensitive data on the document with near-perfect accuracy, so Airbnb keeps only what a decision needs. It is the same principle Airbnb states publicly: it shares only limited details with the other party, like name and verification status, and keeps the ID itself private.
After a multi-year evaluation and a paid pilot, Airbnb moved Incode into production and expanded its government-ID verification within the first year.
How it works
Verify the identity, catch the fraud, protect the data
Any script, any direction
Names in Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Kanji, Hanzi, and Thai come back in their native script, right-to-left included, and map to the profile.
The name is the foundation
If the name read from the ID is wrong, nothing downstream can be trusted. Getting it right is what the rest of the identity decision rests on.
Only what a decision needs
Incode redacts sensitive fields on the document, so Airbnb keeps only what the identity decision requires.
Privacy is the architecture
Incode made privacy a founding conviction long before regulation or the market asked for it. Its AI-first identity verification reduces fraud while remaining private and compliant.
Testimonial
“Verifying a host or guest's real identity from their ID, accurately, across the many countries they come from, is what lets us extend trust everywhere Airbnb operates.”
Operations Executive · Airbnb
What's next
See how Incode verifies identity across every market
Read the name off any ID, in any language, and extend trust to both sides of every booking.