Why an operator asks at all
A licensed operator carries obligations that come with the licence: to know who holds an account and to be able to account for the funds passing through it. Those obligations are not optional for the operator either, which reframes the request usefully — it is a condition of the entry printed in the catalogue, not suspicion of you specifically.
| Usually requested | What satisfies it | Decided when |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | a government document matching the account name | at registration |
| Address | a document showing the address on the account | at registration |
| Source of funds | a record of the transfers that produced the balance | as you go |
| Payment method ownership | the account being in the same name | at registration |
Three of the four rows are settled weeks before the withdrawal they hold up. That is the entire argument of this page.
What the terms here say
The catalogue records what each operator's own terms state about verification, including when they state nothing specific. That last case is a finding rather than a gap: of the 8 sites listed, most describe verification in general terms without publishing a threshold, and a site elsewhere that quotes a precise figure for those operators has invented it.
Keeping the answer ready
"Where did this come from" is a routine question and an easy one to answer if somebody wrote things down at the time. Five lines per deposit — date, amount, the rate accepted at the exchange, the transaction identifier, and what the cashier showed as received — turn a difficult conversation into a short one.
Reconstructing that afterwards means opening several apps, two of which have shortened their history, and the line always missing is the rate: no receipt for it exists anywhere except in the exchange's own record of a trade you may no longer be able to see.
What a request usually contains
When a check does arrive it is rarely open-ended. The standard set is narrow and the same nearly everywhere, which is useful: it means the answer can be prepared once and kept, rather than assembled under time pressure while a withdrawal sits pending.
| What is asked for | What it is for | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| A photo of an ID document | confirming the name on the account | a blurred edge or a cropped corner |
| A recent utility bill or statement | confirming the address given | a document older than the window allowed |
| A selfie holding the document | linking the person to the ID | poor light, or the document unreadable |
| Occasionally, the source of the funds | a regulatory obligation on the operator | nothing prepared, so it takes days |
Every row is a document that exists already. The delay is almost never the check itself; it is the round trip when something is unreadable.
Address, and the part people forget
The name on the account is the well-known trap, and the address is the quiet one. Whatever address was entered at signup is the one a document has to support, and an address typed carelessly months earlier is a mismatch that stops a withdrawal exactly as effectively as a wrong name does.
Both are editable in the account settings until a check is under way, and free to fix at that point. Once a request is open, changing the details being verified is the one thing that reliably turns a short check into a long one.
Nearby
Where this page stops, these carry on: Withdrawals, Opening an account, The parts worth settling in advance.