General

Before integrating Passbase, we suggest you read first our best practice on how to integrate Passbase in your system in the overview section and complete the initial setup steps.

You can either follow the integration guide or watch the integration tutorial that shows the same steps. Please be aware that some property or function names might have slightly changed with newer versions. Make sure to compare your implementation with the latest code snippets here in the documentation.

1. Install the SDK

source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
source 'https://github.com/passbase/cocoapods-specs.git'
source 'https://github.com/passbase/microblink-cocoapods-specs.git'

# 1. Add this here
source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
source 'https://github.com/passbase/cocoapods-specs.git'
source 'https://github.com/passbase/microblink-cocoapods-specs.git'
​
# 2. Add iOS requirements
platform :ios, '11.0'
​
target 'YourApp' do
   # 3. Add use_frameworks!
   use_frameworks!
   
   # 4. Add Passbase pod
   pod 'Passbase'
end
​

2. Initialize the SDK

Initialize the SDK in AppDelegate

Open the Workspace file in your directory. This file was created through the previous step with CocoaPods. It will be called something like YourProject.xcworkspace.

Now, open your AppDelegate.swift file and add import Passbase to the top. Then add the initialize method with your publishable API key from your API settings. Your code should look now like below:

import Passbase
import UIKit
​
@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {
​
    var window: UIWindow?
​
    func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {
        PassbaseSDK.initialize(publishableApiKey: "YOUR_PUBLISBALE_API_KEY")
        return true
    }
​
}

Adjust Your App's Permissions

Please add the following permissions to your app's Info.plist, so that the Passbase iOS SDK can access a user's camera to run a verification. You can do this in the property list view or by code.

Right-click somewhere outside the table and select Add Row. Now add the entries like below.

Or if you prefer to do this step with code, right-click on Info.plist and select Open As -> Source Code. Add the lines below somewhere inside the <dict> </dict>

<!-- permission strings to be include in info.plist -->
<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
<string>Please give us access to your camera, to complete the verification.</string>
<key>NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription</key>
<string>Please give us access to your photo library to verify you.</string>

3. Start a Verification

To start a new verification, you can either trigger it through the storyboard or by code. This section will walk you through both.

Add Button via Storyboard

Two simple steps to get the button running:

1. Drag a new button on your storyboard and give it your desired constraints.

2. Subclass the button as PassbaseButton. Ensure that the module also says Passbase below the class.

That's it! The button should now be rendered and trigger the verification flow.

Add Button Programmatically

To start the verification flow programmatically, create a new button of type PassbaseButton. You can give it parameters, like width, height, x & y through the CGRect and add constraint to position the button.

//Add to the top of the file
import Passbase
import UIKit
​
class ViewController: UIViewController {
​
  override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    
    // Add the button with dimensions
    let button = PassbaseButton(frame: CGRect(x: 40, y: 90, width: 300, height: 60))
    self.view.addSubview(button)
    
    // Or Add button with autolayout support
    let button = PassbaseButton(frame: .zero)
    button.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
    self.view.addSubview(button)
    let buttonConstraints = [
            button.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor, constant: 50.0),
            button.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor, constant: -50.0),
            button.topAnchor.constraint(lessThanOrEqualTo: self.view.topAnchor, constant: 60.0),
            button.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 40),
    ]
    NSLayoutConstraint.activate(buttonConstraints)
  }
}

Prefilling Email Addresses

If you want to automatically prefill user's email address to skip the "Approve your Email" screen. This is available programmatically if you pass the prefillUserEmail parameter to the button like below.

import Passbase
import UIKit
​
class ViewController: UIViewController {
​
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        
        // Pass in the end users email to skip screen
        PassbaseSDK.prefillUserEmail = "[email protected]"
​
        let button = PassbaseButton(frame: CGRect(x: 40, y: 90, width: 300, height: 60))
        self.view.addSubview(button)
    }
}

Prefilling Country

You can automatically prefill user's country in the drop-down list. This is available programmatically if you pass the prefillCountry parameter to the button like below. An ISO-3166 compliant country code, case insensitive. This will not enable skipping the country selection step.

import Passbase
import UIKit
​
class ViewController: UIViewController {
​
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        
        // Pass in the end users email to skip screen
        PassbaseSDK.prefillCountry = "de"
​
        let button = PassbaseButton(frame: CGRect(x: 40, y: 90, width: 300, height: 60))
        self.view.addSubview(button)
    }
}

Prefilling metaData

If you are tracking end users in your backend through an internal UUID, transaction number, stripe ID, etc., you can use the metaData object to securely pass encrypted end user information to identify completed verifications. The metadata object requires an encrypted JSON string via the private key encoded in base64.

import Passbase
import UIKit
​
class ViewController: UIViewController {
​
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        
        // Signed and Armored Metadata, which contain {internal_customer_id: "XYZ", "email": "[email protected]", "country": "de", ...}
        PassbaseSDK.metaData = "AJIZZDIZJADIOAJDOIZJAOIZJDOIAJIODZJIAJDIOZJAIOZDJALANLIKESJIZZOIZDJAOIZJDOZIAJDOIAZJDAZD"
​
        let button = PassbaseButton(frame: CGRect(x: 40, y: 90, width: 300, height: 60))
        self.view.addSubview(button)
    }
}

Add Encryption Key to your Project

Encryption should be completed on the server-side. Once you have completed the encryption, please enter the encryption keys for each individual project within the developer dashboard. The metaData object is then returned on the Passbase API.

​Click here to view metaData encryption documentation.

Retrieve MetaData from Passbase API

After a user completes a verification and you receive the VERIFICATION_REVIEWED webhook event, it is time to call the Passbase Get Identity endpoint. Using this API endpoint, you will see the new metaData object returned.

If the public encryption key is not added to the developer dashboard, you will not see the metaData information returned on the API.

{
   id: "1234-1234-1234-1234",
   resources: [...],
   metadata: { internal_customer_id: "XYZ" }
}

4. Handling Verifications

In some cases it's useful to know if a user has completed the verification flow or canceled it. For this, you can implement the following delegate/callback methods:

Code Example

import Passbase
import UIKit
​
// 1. Add PassbaseDelegate here 
class ViewController: UIViewController, PassbaseDelegate {
​
  override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    
    // 2. Set the delegate object to self
    PassbaseSDK.delegate = self
​
    let button = PassbaseButton(frame: CGRect(x: 40, y: 90, width: 300, height: 60))
    self.view.addSubview(button)
  }
​
  // 3. Implement the delegate methods
  func onFinish(identityAccessKey: String) {
    print("onFinish with identityAccessKey \(identityAccessKey)")
  }
  
  func onSubmitted(identityAccessKey: String) {
    print("onSubmitted with identityAccessKey \(identityAccessKey)")
  }
​
  func onError(errorCode: String) {
    print("onError with code \(errorCode)")
  }
  
  func onStart() {
    print("onStart")
  }
}

We recommend the following process for handling identity verifications:

1. Obtain the identityAccessKey of a successfully completed identity verification from the callback method and save it to your DB to the user's profile

2. Set up webhooks to be notified once the identity verification has been processed by our system. Also once you have approved or declined the user in your dashboard

3. Now you can use your own backend to query the details about this identity verification with e.g. the Get Identity call to obtain the details

Identity Access Key as Reference

In order for your application to interoperate with Passbase, you should reference to your users once the Verification is completed.

For that, you will need to keep track of the identityAccessKey returned by the onFinish or onSubmitted callbacks and associate it in your backend with your end users' id. We recommend to save this key after the onSubmitted method from your user's completed verification, or listen for the incoming webhooks to make a call to the Passbase API linking back the email address of the user.

5. UI Customizations

Appearance

Our SDK currently supports a set of customization options which will influence the appearance. To customize the verification flow, please navigate to your developer dashboard's customization section. Here you can choose amongst a variety of colors, fonts, accepted countries & much more.

We also offer a dark mode, which will be automatically started if a user has activated this in his system settings.

Language

We support a variety of different languages for the verification flow. As of this writing more than 10 including (English, Spanish, German & many more). If one is missing and you want us to add support for it, please reach out to our customer support.

The SDK automatically detects the language of the user's phone settings. If we support the language, the verification flow will be set to it. Otherwise, the default is English.

Example & Demo App

The code below is a sample implementation of a class with prefilled email and button added via code. You can find a complete sample App with both approaches (Storyboard & programmatic) on our Github page.

Link: Passbase iOS Demo App​

import Passbase
import UIKit
​
class ViewController: UIViewController, PassbaseDelegate {
​
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        PassbaseSDK.delegate = self
​
        // Optional - You can prefill the email to skip that step.
        Passbase.prefillUserEmail = "[email protected]"
​
        let button = PassbaseButton(frame: CGRect(x: 40, y: 90, width: 300, height: 60))
        self.view.addSubview(button)
    }
    
    func onFinish(identityAccessKey: String) {
      print("onFinish with identityAccessKey \(identityAccessKey)")
    }
    
    func onSubmitted(identityAccessKey: String) {
      print("onSubmitted with identityAccessKey \(identityAccessKey)")
    }
  
    func onError(errorCode: String) {
      print("onError with code \(errorCode)")
    }
    
    func onStart() {
      print("onStart")
    }
}