Binance is one of our personal favorite crypto exchanges on the market for its ease of use and exceptional service quality. But, one thing we’ve seen new users get a bit confused by is the Binance verification process.
In essence, Binance requires you to verify your legal identity to comply with international anti-money laundering laws. There are also several tiers/levels to this process, each of which can take a different amount of time to complete.
Let’s take a closer look at the verification process to figure out what you need and how long it will take.
Steps of the Verification Process
Here are the key steps involved in completely verifying your Binance account:
Step 1 - Signing up for a Binance account
Account creation is the first step of owning a verified account on Binance. This involves providing an email ID or phone number for your account and writing down a secure password. You will also have to enter a verification code that Binance texted or emailed you to create the account.
Step 2 - Filling out personal information
After the signup process, Binance will ask you to enter your basic information including your full name and date of birth. Make sure this info matches your government-issued photo ID.
Step 3 - Uploading required documents
Next, Binance will ask you to upload a valid photo ID. Here you can upload a government-issued ID like your driver’s license or passport. One thing we noted is that this step is mandatory for Binance.com users on the first level of verification.
Bianance.us users won’t have to upload a photo ID unless they want to upgrade to the “Advanced” tier.
Step 4 - Waiting for review and approval
If you have provided all the required information and documents correctly, all that’s left is to wait for the approval. Binance will review the info and ensure that everything matches up with the official records. If everything checks out, you will receive your verification as soon as possible.
Average Verification Time
To gain further insight into the Binance verification system, we created some new accounts and recorded the time it took for each verification tier. We then combined this data with our previous experience with this exchange and compiled the following table of average verification times:
Verification tier/level | Required information & documents | Average verification time |
---|---|---|
For global users | ||
Verified | Full name, date of birth, valid photo ID, and a photo of your face. | 5 minutes |
Verified Plus | The same info and documents as the previous level, plus a proof of your address. | Less than 15 minutes |
Entity Verification | Entity name & registration number, operating & registered address, information of the Director, and more. | Between 15 to 30 days |
For US citizens (Binance.us) | ||
Basic | Full name, date of birth, Social Security number, and address. | 3 minutes |
Advanced | Valid state issued photo ID and a current photo of your face. | Less than 20 minutes |
We’d like to emphasize again that these average times are from our personal experience with Binance. Your experience can vary depending on a number of factors like your location and local laws.
The important thing here is to stay patient and let the process run its course. Trying to speed through verification can lead to mistakes — like the entry of incorrect information — which will increase the verification time even further.
Factors that Affect Verification Time
From our experience, Binance is pretty consistent with its verification times. But, there are a few factors that can affect exactly how long it takes. These include:
Quality of the submitted documents
If the documents you provided are clear and easily legible, the Binance team will be able to understand and verify their content more quickly. But uploading blurry, pixelated, or otherwise low-quality documents can cause slowdowns.
For instance, let’s say your selfie is a bit blurry and does not match the photo ID. In this case, you will have to provide additional documents and wait for manual approval which will increase the verification time.
Time of day and volume of submissions
Since Binance is making sure that the provided info for each verification request is completely correct, it takes some time to process.
This processing time isn’t a noticeable factor in most cases. But, if there are a lot of new users trying to verify their accounts at a given time, it can take longer to complete every request. While we have no way of confirming this, this request volume can depend on the time of day as well. This is because most new users in your region will be trying to verify during the daytime and not in the middle of the night.
The level of verification
As we mentioned earlier, Binance offers multiple verification tiers to its users. Higher tiers need more information and documents for approval. Naturally, more info/documents require more time to process, thus they take longer.
The difference between these tiers can be anywhere between 5 minutes to a month or even more for entity verification.
Tips for a Faster Verification
We’ve gone through verification on Binance and other crypto exchanges many times. Here are a few tips we learned to speed up the process:
Providing complete and accurate information
We cannot stress this enough, make sure that the information you provide is correct. Avoid issues like spelling mistakes at all costs. Also, ensure that this info matches what’s written on your government-issued documents.
Submitting high-quality documents
In an ideal situation, you should digitize your documents with a scanner and upload those high-quality files to Binance. If your only option is to take pictures of the documents with your phone, here’s how you can maximize picture quality:
Checking for technical issues before submitting
Even if you are uploading the correct documents, they can still get rejected due to some technical issues. For example, an expired passport or driver’s license will likely get rejected by Binance’s verification team. So, make sure that the documents that you’re uploading are up-to-date.
Being proactive in addressing any issues that arise
When an issue comes up, don’t wait for the next day and resolve it as quickly as possible. If you receive an email to submit more documents, get to it immediately.
Conclusion
All in all, the verification process on Binance is fairly streamlined with clearly defined tiers/levels. Just remember that verification is essential to ensure the safety of your account and compliance with your country's laws. So, be patient and stay active to resolve any issues. Unless you’re registering an entity, you should be able to unlock the highest verification tier in no more than 20 minutes.