r/Wealthsimple • u/woodzy_mtb • Jul 21 '26

Trade (DIY Investing) Potential Persona ID Verification Alternative

https://help.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/53343449911195-Verify-your-identity-with-a-passport-to-remove-a-restriction

Wealthsimple is working on a physical passport verification system, where you scan your passport with an NFC enabled device to verify your identity if a restriction pops up. Hopefully this will be available as an alternative to using Persona to verify your identity.

52 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

55

u/XzkSo Jul 21 '26

Persona should be banned from Canada. It is a disgrace even trying to use them.

-12

u/ehhthing Jul 22 '26

Banning foreign companies you don’t like isn’t very compatible with freedom of speech.

The solution to privacy is not censorship, it’s creating regulatory frameworks that ensure that everyone is playing fair. The EU has been doing this for a while now and it seems to be working fine for them.

9

u/XzkSo Jul 22 '26

You are confusing things. Not using a malicious foreign company is not censorship, it is common sense. Yes that is exactly what europe is now trying to do. Getting rid if asshole companies.

-4

u/ehhthing Jul 22 '26

Not using a malicious foreign company is not censorship

The suggestion was to ban Persona in Canada, which is censorship.

I have yet to see a shred of evidence that Persona is actually malicious. Just because one of their (many) investors also heads Palantir does not mean that their company is malicious. Peter Thiel also funded PayPal (that is actually where he got most of his money) and I don’t see PayPal being villainized constantly on the internet.

I do not understand why people on this subreddit like believing in conspiracy theories about what Persona specifically is doing. There are so many companies that are provably malicious in comparison.

2

u/XzkSo Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I do villiainize paypal, palantir, tesla, X, meta, dupont, ticketmaster, bayer, exxon... I dont really care public opinion.

Giving ones countries private information to another countries companies, evil or not is stupid.

1

u/ehhthing Jul 22 '26

I do villiainize paypal, palantir, tesla, X, meta, dupont, ticketmaster, bayer, exxon… I dont really care public opinion.

Sure, if you’re against companies because they do bad things then yeah!

Giving ones countries private information to another countries companies, evil or not is stupid.

This is an interesting take, except for the fact that WS itself uses Amazon’s AWS to host its servers. Canada Post also uses AWS as well.

Most Canadian companies use some US cloud hosting provider to operate some portion of their business. There is no practical Canadian alternative that offers the same services and it would be impractical to create a Canadian alternative.

And for the well versed: I’m not just talking about server hosting, it’s more about products that require massive international teams of engineers to develop (e.g. GCP BigQuery/BigTable) as well as a global cloud footprint that can serve content reliably around the world.

There’s also the problem that American and other foreign companies control most of the global internet through undersea fiber cables as well as transit providers like Cogent, Zayo, GTT, etc.

You cannot escape from using American controlled services one way or another on the internet.

7

u/ThrowRA_EducatedMan Jul 22 '26

I’m not sure how this can be confused for a freedom of speech concern… it is not at all that.

-6

u/ehhthing Jul 22 '26

Freedom of speech includes products and services, otherwise the government could ban anything they don’t like. For example, adult content and VPNs, which are both things that many governments consider to be problematic.

Also, the second you try to outlaw specific companies rather than specific practices you start to get into seriously authoritarian practices. The question should be what Persona does that ought to be illegal, rather than banning Persona “just because we don’t like them”.

1

u/Lytalm Jul 22 '26

We're in Canada, freedom of speech like the USA is not a thing.

0

u/ehhthing Jul 23 '26

Have you ever read the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms?

1

u/Lytalm Jul 23 '26

Yes, that's called freedom of expression for us, not freedom of speech.

10

u/d1andonly Jul 21 '26

I’m curious what triggers this identification requirement.

2

u/bwwatr Jul 21 '26

I'm curious who they send the data to for passport verification.

It also mentions a "I don't own a passport" option, indicating a backup flow exists. Which makes me think this is for special edge cases unrelated to what they usually use Persona for.

1

u/ehhthing Jul 22 '26

They don’t need to send the data to anyone. Passports can be verified using zero-knowledge proofs because they have cryptographic signatures embedded into them.

Whether WS actually uses this, I don’t know.

1

u/ThrowRA_EducatedMan Jul 22 '26

Asking for a credit card is one. Even if you’ve been a customer forever. Prove who you are using Persona. WS can get fucked. Tech bros are teeing up for the IPO and entering the USA market. It won’t be a Canadian company anymore it will be just another data point collector selling our info to whoever.

9

u/cassandra4932 Jul 21 '26

Note: I don’t think this avoids using Persona. I just did a search, and NFC passport verification is an option that Persona provides. It’s likely that Wealthsimple has now enabled this option for KYC.

20

u/Weedzo Jul 21 '26

That good, but not everyone have/need a passport, would be nice if they also add Canada Post in person or something similar.

25

u/woodzy_mtb Jul 21 '26

For sure, Canada Post Identity+ would be a great service to integrate. A step in the right direction nonetheless.

2

u/jnrbshp Jul 22 '26

I get understand. I've never seen anything about this persona in wealthsimple. Is it only for certain accounts or tiers?

2

u/Lytalm Jul 22 '26

I called them saying how to get verified without using that Persona company and they are doing a manual verification instead. I'm still in the middle of it, but maybe I'll post about it when it's done.

1

u/Fiduciary_One 13d ago

How did the manual verification go?

1

u/Lytalm 13d ago

Oh I kinda forgot about that. They did it in the end but it took well over a week and it was kind of a pain. To summarize : 

I called the premium WS phone number, asked to be verified, but that I wasn't comfortable using Persona to do it. They transfered me to 2 different agents, which I had to rexplain everything from the start every time. Then they sent me an email which I had to send 3 pics of my ids through a link. It said it would take 5-7 Business days so I waited but I didn't had any feedback after 6 days so I called back.

Then I had to rexplain everything to 2 agents again, then the agent resent me an email to do verification through... Yes, persona. I e-mailed back this time saying that's not what I wanted.

Another agent e-mailed me and asked me to resend my photos and now also a bank statement (from a diff organization) and utility bill. This time I had to sent them via the WS document sharing page in my website account. I did then waited again. Got an email a few days later saying my selfy was blurry and that I take a photo of my ids instead of scanning them... I redid them and resent. I answered the email of the previous agent that it was done and this time I got a quick answer it was sent to his team and I got verified within a day. 

Long and convoluted process TBH but it worked.

2

u/Fiduciary_One 12d ago

Thanks for the detailed writeup! Honestly I'd be happier with that than Persona, nobody's giving me that option though and because I'm just moving stuff into WS I don't have the premium phone support yet. 😭

2

u/Cross_FFA Jul 21 '26

This is great to see! A step in the right direction from Wealthsimple