Cost Per Verification (CPV)

Cost Per Verification is the simplest number a compliance or finance buyer puts in a spreadsheet when comparing identity-verification vendors: the price of one check, full stop. Vendor A charges $1.50, Vendor B charges $4.00: Vendor A looks cheaper, and for a single, one-off check, it is.

The metric is honest as far as it goes, and misleading past that point, for one specific reason: it treats every verification as an independent, unrelated event. It isn't. The same person opens a bank account, then a wallet, then a lending app, then gets asked to re-verify at the bank eighteen months later, and a pure CPV comparison prices every one of those events at that vendor's flat per-check rate, because that's what a per-verification-billed vendor actually charges: the same price the fifth time as the first.

Where it comes from

Nobody owns this metric. It's the same arithmetic, price divided by usage event, that Stripe applies to a card transaction, Twilio to an SMS, and Plaid to a bank-data call, generalized to identity checks by the IDV vendor market's own decades-old habit of quoting a flat per-verification price. Sumsub, Onfido, Jumio, Persona, and Veriff all publish or quote one. Solidus didn't invent the concept and doesn't claim to.

What it hides

A first-time identity check and a check on someone the system has already verified are, cryptographically, completely different problems. The first requires reading a document, running liveness, matching a face. The second, if the person kept a credential from the first check and the relying party is willing to accept it, requires verifying a signature. CPV, priced flat, charges the same for both, because almost the entire identity-verification industry bills per verification event with no reuse concept built in. The number that actually separates a portable-credential model from a traditional IDV vendor isn't CPV on the first check, it's what happens to cost on the second, third, and Nth check for a person who already went through the first one. That's Re-verification Cost, a separate entry, and this one exists to set that up honestly rather than to hide behind it.

Solidus's own number, stated plainly

Solidus's published fee schedule prices a KYC Level 2 check (document + liveness) at $5.00: a figure that sits above, not below, Sumsub's comparable doc+face+AML tier ($1.50–2.50), Persona's self-serve rate ($1.50), and Onfido/Entrust's equivalent ($1.50–3.50 without AML). On CPV alone, for a first check, Solidus is the more expensive option among the vendors named here, and this entry says so directly rather than around it. That $5.00 is also, honestly, a reference figure in Solidus's own tokenomics documentation, not a locked, final, billed price, and there is no paying customer to point to who has actually been charged it.

See also

Re-verification Cost is the number that actually carries Solidus's argument, because it isn't about the first check. Total Cost of Ownership is the fuller comparison a buyer should run instead of CPV alone. Verification Reuse is the mechanism that makes a lower blended cost possible in the first place.