Open your Bumble profile and tap Edit profile. Tap Get verified under your photos, then Get ID verified. Follow the prompts to upload a photo of a government-issued ID, such as a passport or a driver's license, and finish by taking a live selfie. Bumble uses the ID to check your age and your photo, and once you pass, a badge on your profile shows other members that you completed the ID process.
The steps in order
Bumble's help page gives six steps, and they run in this order:
- Open your Bumble profile.
- Tap Edit profile.
- Tap Get verified, which sits under your photos.
- Tap Get ID verified.
- Follow the prompts and upload a photo of a government-issued ID, like a passport or driver's license.
- Take a live selfie.
Have the ID in your hand before you start. Photograph it on a plain, dark surface in good light, with the whole card in the frame and no glare across the photo or the text. Then take the selfie the same way you would for a passport: face the light, no cap, no sunglasses, no filter.
What the ID check confirms
Bumble says ID Verification helps it make sure you are who you say you are. It uses your ID to check two things: your age and your photo. Alongside the ID, you take a live selfie as the last step.
This is a different check from photo verification. Photo verification compares a selfie with the photos on your profile and earns the blue checkmark. ID Verification compares you with a government document and earns its own badge. Bumble's safety page describes the ID check as a way to add an extra layer of trust by verifying your identity.
Your date of birth is set by the ID
One consequence surprises men who did not read the fine print. Bumble's page on changing personal details says that once you are ID verified, your date of birth will match your ID and cannot be changed.
That is good news if the age on your account was a typo. The same page calls ID Verification the easiest way to correct a wrong date of birth. It is less welcome if you knocked a few years off on purpose, because the ID puts them back.
If that is you, take it as a nudge rather than a problem. A woman who meets you expecting a man five years younger starts the date feeling misled, and nothing you say over a drink repairs that. An honest age in front of the right women beats a fake one in front of the wrong ones.
Where the rules differ by country
The steps above are the general version, and Bumble's pages note several local differences.
Members in India are asked to use a physical Aadhaar card, a passport or a driver's license rather than an Aadhaar check through Digilocker. In Japan, Bumble says ID verification is required when you create an account, so your date of birth is set to match your ID from the start. In South Korea, members may be asked to complete a separate age check through a third-party provider. That check has its own instructions about which numbers to cover.
Bumble's pages also allow that ID Verification may not be available in every country. If you cannot find the option, that may be why.
Before you start swiping: do photo verification too
The ID check and the photo check are two different things. If you want both badges, do both.
Photo verification is quick. Tap the verify button on your profile and take the selfie it asks for. In the USA it is mandatory. Elsewhere it is optional unless Bumble asks. Bumble's advice for a first meeting tells members to look for the verification badge, and to politely ask a match to verify if they have not.
Between the two badges, a woman looking at you knows your photos are you and that you went through an ID check. That takes a real worry off the table before your first message arrives.
What the badges do not do
A badge tells her you are real. It does not tell her why she should reply to you. That still comes down to photos that look like your actual life and a bio with something specific in it. It also comes down to an opening message about her rather than a generic hello.
Think of the badges as removing reasons to say no. A woman who was wary of meeting a stranger now has one less worry. She still needs a reason to say yes, and that reason is you: the life your photos show, the way your bio sounds, and whether talking to you is easy.
Verify, then spend your effort where the badges cannot help: on being someone she wants to meet.
Written by Matthew Stevens, Co-Founder & Head Coach. More than half a decade coaching men across the US and worldwide.
Everything here comes out of real coaching work: the approaches, dates, texts and profiles we go through with the men we coach.