Glossary

This page defines key Fourthline terminology and parameters to help you navigate our API integrations with clarity.

Definitions

Term	Definition
5AMLD	European Union Directive 2015/849, known as the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, is the standard for preventing money laundering and terrorist financing and entered into force in January 2020.
AML	Anti-money laundering legislation aims to prevent conversion of illegally obtained money into legal money.
BaFin	The Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht is the financial regulatory authority for Germany.
branch	A configuration of products, modules, and/or risk appetite for a specific market you operate in.
BSN	Dutch citizen service number (burgerservicenummer).
CDD Report	A detailed, fully compliant, evidenced report (PDF or zip file) for each flow, which serves as an audit trail. It contains all the data and files processed and checks performed, as well as the final outcome and risk score.
case	A case is all the data gathered for a specific Identity Verification, AML investigation, Client Authentication, or Document Authentication case.
case processing	When Fourthline validates and processes all the data gathered for a case, assigns a risk score, and generates the report.
certificate	A qualified electronic certificate is issued by a qualified trust service provider to create a qualified electronic signature once the client’s identity is verified to an appropriate standard.
client	Natural persons who want to use your services.
clients	Natural persons who want to use your services.
conversion	How often clients successfully complete a flow, e.g. identity verification.
Core NFC	Core NFC is an Apple framework that allows iOS apps to read, and in some cases, write data to NFC tags, including those in identity documents, contactless cards, and smart posters.
CORS	CORS stands for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing.
diacritics	Marks attached to letters to indicate a particular pronunciation (also known as "accents"), e.g. é, ç, ö, ž.
EAA	The European Accessibility Act is a directive that aims to improve the functioning of the internal market for accessible products and services by removing barriers created by divergent rules in Member States.
eIDs	An eID is a digital version of your passport or ID card, stored on a physical document, often with a secure NFC chip inside.
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)	An independent, not-for-profit organization that helps develop and test global technical standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications, and services.
FATF	The Financial Action Task Force is an intergovernmental organization that sets international standards to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and other related threats.
FCA	The Financial Conduct Authority is an independent regulatory body responsible for overseeing financial firms to ensure they operate with integrity, protect consumers, and maintain market stability in the UK.
FM-GwG	FM-GwG (Finanzmarkt-Geldwäschegesetz) is the Austrian Financial Markets Anti-Money Laundering Act, which implements the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives (AMLD) into Austrian national law.
four-eyes review	When two Fourthline human agents separately perform a review.
GDPR	The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 is a European Union regulation on protecting the privacy of personal data you store, handle, or transfer in the EU and European Economic Area.
geolocation	The client’s physical geographic location in the world, identified using latitude and longitude.
human agent	An employee of Fourthline or a Business Partner who manually processes, and approves or declines cases in the Case Review Portal.
human agents	Employees of Fourthline or a Business Partner who manually processes, and approves or declines cases in the Case Review Portal.
identity document	A document that a client provides to prove their identity, e.g. passport, national ID card.
identity documents	Documents that clients provide to prove their identity, e.g. passport, national ID card.
identity data	The information required to process an Identity Verification case, including the client's personal data and device metadata.
identity files	Any type of file you upload to Fourthline that demonstrates a client's identity, e.g. identity document photos and video, selfie photo and video.
identity verification process	When Fourthline confirms that a person is who they claim to be by cross-referencing personal information against multiple global and local databases, including government records, financial records, and public records.
IDV provider	An Identity Verification provider is a service that confirms a client's claimed identity by cross-referencing personal information against multiple databases, including government records, financial records, and public records.
JMLSG	The Joint Money Laundering Steering Group is a UK-based private sector-led body that provides guidance to financial institutions on complying with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regulations.
KYC	Know your customer (KYC) checks are a legally required process of verifying the identity, suitability, and risks involved with starting and maintaining a business relationship with your client.
KYC Training Glidepath	A progressive onboarding curriculum that takes new analysts from basic compliance concepts to advanced KYC procedures over time.
liveness	Liveness refers to the process of determining whether the biometric sample (typically a face) is being captured from a living human being who is physically present, and not from a photo, video, screen, or mask.
MRZ	The machine-readable zone (MRZ) is the area of an identity document (usually passports) that contains the client’s personal details.
NFC chip	An electronic microprocessor chip containing biometric information embedded in an identity document that can be used to authenticate the document holder’s identity.
OCR	Optical character recognition electronically converts images of text into machine-encoded text, e.g. from an identity document photo.
OSINT	An open-source intelligence investigation, where Fourthline agents collect and analyze information from public sources to clarify a client's identity.
PEP	A politically exposed person who holds a prominent and influential public function and therefore presents a higher risk of potential involvement in bribery and corruption.
personal data	Information about an identifiable person, e.g. full name, date and place of birth, nationality, tax identification number, social security number. .
PoA	Proof of address: Fourthline offers Digital PoA and Physical PoA products.
primary document	An official form of identification that includes the client's name and a photograph, serving as a primary means to verify the client's identity, e.g. passport, national ID card.
PSP	A Payment Service Provider is a third-party company that enables businesses to accept electronic payments, such as credit and debit card transactions. PSPs act as intermediaries between merchants and the financial system, facilitating secure and efficient payment processing.
QEC	A qualified electronic certificate is issued by a qualified trust service provider to create a qualified electronic signature once the client’s identity is verified to an appropriate standard.
qualified electronic signature	An electronic signature that complies with EU Regulation No. 910/2014 (eIDAS Regulation) for electronic transactions in the European market. It provides a high level of assurance of who signed a digital document, equivalent to a handwritten signature.
QTSP	A qualified trust service provider is a licensed organization that can issue qualified electronic certificates and create qualified electronic signatures.
SDKs	SDK stands for Software Development Kit. It is a collection of tools, libraries, documentation, code samples, and APIs that developers use to build applications for a specific platform, framework, or service.
secondary document	A supporting document used in addition to a primary ID, sometimes required when the primary ID is paper-based, e.g. passport, driving license.
selfie	A photo the client takes of their face on their mobile device.
sendback	A case that Fourthline sends back to you during case processing, e.g. to request missing data or better quality images or data.
sensitivity list	Your list of known fraudsters or suspicious persons who you don't want to do business with.
Sepblac	Sepblac is Spain’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the sole national authority responsible for analyzing and combating money laundering and terrorist financing. It also acts as the Supervisory Authority for compliance with AML and CTF regulations.
SLA	Your service-level agreement with Fourthline.
spoof	A fraudulent or deceptive attempt to trick a system or person by presenting false, faked, or manipulated information.
spoofed	An image, video, or identity that has been faked, manipulated, or imitated in order to deceive a person or system, typically as part of a fraud or impersonation attempt.
spoofing	A fraudulent or deceptive attempt to trick a system or person by presenting false, faked, or manipulated information.
TIN	The tax identification number (TIN) used by most EU countries to identify taxpayers and facilitate their national tax affairs.
UI	User interface: The screens that the client interacts with.
unicode	Unicode is a universal standard for encoding, representing, and handling text. It assigns a unique number (called a code point) to every character across virtually every writing system in use today. Example: The Unicode code point for A is U+0041.
uuid	Universally Unique Identifier is a 128-bit label used to uniquely identify objects in computer systems.
VIZ	The visual-inspection zone is the area on an identity document that includes the photograph, document designation, personal data, date of issue, and document validity.
Wwft	The Dutch Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act (Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme, Wwft), which entered into force in 2008.

API parameters

Parameter	Description
`branch`	Use this parameter for case configuration in older setups. Set the string provided by your Fourthline delivery manager. If not set, your default configuration will be used.
`client_id`	This identifier is part of your Fourthline API credentials.
`client_secret`	Your unique password from your Fourthline API credentials.
`clientData`	The client’s identity data.
`person`	The client’s personal data.
`providerClientId`	Your unique identifier for the client.
`verificationId`	The unique identifier for the Identity Verification case.
`workflowId`	Our unique identifier for the workflow, returned in the Create workflow response.
`workflowName`	The type of workflow.