Identity checks get scoped as a legal requirement and built like one. In consumer products they are usually the feature.
Identity verification is normally handed to whoever owns compliance, specified as a checkbox, and built as far from the core product as possible. That is the right instinct for a bank onboarding flow. It is the wrong one for a consumer product where trust between strangers is the thing being sold.
In a marketplace, a rental, a dating product or anything that ends with two people meeting, verification is not overhead on the experience — it is the experience. It is the reason someone completes the action instead of closing the app. Build it as a legal afterthought and you have buried your strongest conversion argument three screens deep in settings.
Two things follow from taking it seriously. First, the failure modes matter more than the happy path. A false negative — a real person the system wrongly rejects — is not an edge case, it is a customer lost permanently and loudly. That deserves as much design attention as the successful case, and almost never gets it.
Second, placement is a product decision. Asked too early, verification reads as an obstacle before any value has been shown. Asked too late, it interrupts someone at the moment of intent. The right position is usually just before the point where trust starts to matter — not at signup, and not at checkout.
Done well, the badge is worth more than the check. What you are really building is a signal other users can act on, which means it has to be visible wherever a decision gets made, not merely stored against a profile.