Use Cases for Address Registry Lookups: From Enhanced User Experience to Fraud Detection

Companies often need their customer’s address for identity verification, accurate product deliveries, or providing personalized services. 

But users might enter an incorrect address by mistake or – in more severe cases –deliberately provide misleading information. This is where address lookup technology comes to rescue.

Address lookups come in many forms, and businesses can choose from a variety of address verification solutions.

Today, we focus specifically on the address registry lookups. These stand out by providing verified legal addresses from trusted sources. 

We’ll look at the use cases for verified addresses and how businesses can access this data in different European countries.

What is an address registry lookup?

An address registry lookup is the process of retrieving an individual’s verified legal address from an authoritative database.

In many countries, businesses can access their customers’ verified legal addresses by integrating a dedicated API that supplies this data from governmental records.

This simplifies the experience for the end user. For example, when creating a new online account, the user's profile will already contain verified, up-to-date address information, and other relevant details.

This also offers several advantages to companies, such as improved customer data quality, streamlined onboarding, and better compliance.

Use cases for address registry lookups

Want to know how this can work for your organization? Let's explore a few use cases.

Improved user experience

This is one of the primary use cases for address registry lookups. Accurate address data lets companies tailor services to the users’ location and provide them with relevant information.

Here are some examples that fall into this category:

• Streamlined sign-up: Businesses can simplify sign-up by prefilling the updated address details in a newly created user profile. This reduces friction and ensures that customer information is correct from the start.
• Verifying the shipping address: E-commerce platforms can use address lookups to make sure deliveries go to the right place. This reduces shipping errors, minimizes return rates, and enhances customer satisfaction.
  
  

Fraud detection

Address registry lookups can also help reduce the risk of fraud. Accurate address information confirms a user’s identity and prevents fraudulent activity.

Address registry lookups can thus prevent malicious parties from providing a fake or mismatched address. This may be crucial in the event of identity theft.

Alternatively, if the user provides an address that doesn't match official records, it can raise a red flag and lead to further investigation.

Regulatory compliance

Lastly, businesses may need their users’ verified legal addresses to comply with various regulations:

• KYC: “Know Your Customer” regulations require certain companies (e.g. financial services) to possess verified address data for their users.
• AML: Anti-money laundering regulations also require verified legal addresses, to prevent companies from dealing with sanctioned countries, blacklisted individuals, or politically exposed persons (PEP).

How to perform an address lookup

Each county has a national database that contains the legal addresses of its citizens. 

It is often possible for businesses and public authorities to programmatically access this data via a dedicated API, as long as they have a valid reason to do so.

Let’s explore the sources of verified addresses in several European countries (and if Criipto can help your company access this information). 

Denmark

Verified address data of Danish residents is available via Det Centrale Personregister, where an address is connected to an individual’s CPR number. 

If you use Criipto as your MitID broker, verified address data is available as an add-on to the Danish MitID logins.

Sweden 

In Sweden, verified legal address data is provided by the Statens person­adress­register (SPAR). 

Adding address registry lookups in Sweden to our offering is on the roadmap. If this is something you’re interested in, please reach out to us.

Norway

Skatteetaten, the Norwegian Tax Administration, is the primary source of verified legal addresses in Norway.

The feature is not yet available through Criipto, but we're planning to incorporate it in our future offerings. If this catches your attention, please get in touch with us.

It's worth noting that companies can get unverified, user-supplied address data when users log in with the Norwegian BankID. This flow is considered experimental. You should not rely on it as the only way to obtain address details, since the user may choose not to provide this information through BankID. But offering this option may help reduce input errors during account creation and order placement.

Finland

The Finnish Population Information System is a national registry that contains information about Finnish citizens and residents. It includes details like names, personal identity codes, and addresses. Businesses and private organizations can access verified address information directly from this system.

The Finnish Trust Network (FTN) – an eID system provided by Finnish banks and telecom providers – typically doesn't include address details in user profiles.

Offering address registry lookups in Finland to our customers is on our radar. If this is something that would make a difference for your company – we'd love to hear from you! 

The Netherlands and Belgium

In the Netherlands and Belgium, the official governmental databases are known as Basisregistratie Personen (BRP) and Registre National (National Register), respectively. 

In both countries, popular eID solutions (iDIN and itsme®) are offered by a consortium of national banks. With the Dutch iDIN and the Belgian itsme®, individuals can add their address details to their eID profiles through their banks. For instance, itsme® lets users update address details either through their bank or directly via their online itsme® account. 

It's important to note that any user-provided address data — even when available via iDIN and itsme® — is not verified against the official records.

At the moment, Criipto only offers unverified address data via iDIN and itsme®. However, we're actively exploring the possibility of providing address registry lookups in both countries. If you're interested in this feature or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.