About Us
Every year, millions of employers are required by federal law to verify who their new hires actually are. Most don't do it right — not because they're careless, but because the tools they've been given were built to fill out forms, not verify people.
Janice Kephart has spent decades defining the federal identity systems that ensure how America answers the question who are you? She believes the I-9 law places an unfair burden on employers — requiring identity determinations they were never equipped to make, then penalizing them when they get it wrong.ZipID is her answer.
Part public service, part practical tool.
Our Mission
To give every U.S. employer the tools to meet their federal identity verification obligation — accurately, efficiently, and with confidence — regardless of their size, industry, or I-9 expertise.
Our Vision
An America where identity verification in the hiring process is so seamless and trustworthy that employers can focus on what matters: building great teams. And where new hires know from day one that their identity was handled with care, precision, and respect.
Message from Our Founder
Forged in Technical Policy.
Built for Practicality.
Janice Kephart spent more than two decades at the intersection of national security law, identity policy, and biometric technology — not observing it, but shaping it.As Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and lead counsel on the 9/11 Commission's border security and immigration investigations, she helped expose the identity vulnerabilities that enabled the September 11 attacks — and then spent the next decade helping fix them.
Before founding ZipID, I served as Homeland Security Director at MorphoTrak — now IDEMIA, one of the largest biometric technology companies in the world — where I designed and deployed biometric workflows at enterprise scale for U.S. government clients.
Her work directly contributed to the passage of the REAL ID Act and the architecture of the U.S. biometric entry-exit system, two of the most consequential identity security programs in American history.
She has testified before Congress 19 times. Published the first public federal biometric report. Served as Homeland Security Director at MorphoTrak — now IDEMIA, the world's largest biometric identity company — where she designed and deployed biometric workflows at enterprise scale for U.S. government clients.
Her "terrorist travel" research helped redefine global border security protocols.ZipID is the distillation of that career into a single, accessible product — bringing the rigor of federal identity doctrine to the everyday hiring process.
You can find her Wikipedia here.
Why Trust ZipID?
Because the person who built it has spent a career inside the machinery of American identity security — and knows exactly where it breaks down.
Employers are legally required to verify every new hire's identity and work authorization. But the tools available to do that have never matched the legal obligation — until now. ZipID brings document capture, biometric verification, liveness detection, and fraud intelligence into a single workflow that anyone can complete in under eight minutes, with no I-9 expertise required.
There's something else worth knowing. Janice Kephart is the great-granddaughter of Horace Kephart — writer, explorer, and co-founder of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She's also a Grammy-nominated spoken word artist. The instinct to forge new paths, to find clarity in complexity, and to make something that lasts — that runs deep.
ZipID is the result: a platform where automation, accuracy, and human dignity come together to solve a problem that has never been solved correctly before. Built to protect employers, protect new hires, and bring trust to one of the most consequential moments in the employment relationship — the very first one.
ZipID is buzzing
with great customers
Melanie Parrish
Strategic People Solutions HR
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ZipID ICE-compliant I-9 software?
Yes. ZipID satisfies all five federal electronic I-9 system requirements under 8 CFR § 274a.2 — including compliant audit trails, electronic signature protocols, and secure storage standards. It is specifically designed to meet the March 2026 ICE reclassification that elevated common errors to substantive violations.
As of January 2025, I-9 paperwork violations carry fines of $288 to $2,861 per form under 8 CFR § 274a.10(b)(2). Knowingly hiring unauthorized workers carries fines up to $28,619 per worker for repeat offenses. ICE audit rates in 2025 ran at least ten times higher than the prior year.
ZipID is pursuing certified E-Verify third-party agent status by August 2026. Currently, after the employer signs the I-9, ZipID redirects to E-Verify and automatically populates the resulting case data into the Additional Information field — preserving the complete record for audit purposes.
What is NIST and why does it matter for I-9 verification?
NIST — the National Institute of Standards and Technology — is the federal agency that sets accuracy benchmarks for biometric identity technologies. For I-9 compliance, NIST validation matters because it provides an independent government-verified measure of whether a facial recognition system is reliable enough to trust. ZipID uses NIST-tested algorithms rated at 99.998% accuracy.
ZipID's 1:1 facial recognition is rated at 99.998% accuracy using NIST-validated algorithms — fewer than 2 mismatches per 100,000 verifications. Liveness detection is built in to confirm the selfie is from a real, present person rather than a photo or deepfake.
OCR — Optical Character Recognition — reads and extracts text from government-issued IDs. ZipID uses AI-powered OCR to instantly capture a new hire's ID data and automatically populate the required Form I-9 fields, eliminating manual entry and typos. The AI layer also cross-checks extracted data for logical consistency and flags tampered, synthetic, or spoofed documents.
ZipID uses NIST-validated biometric facial recognition to match a live selfie to the photo on the new hire's government-issued ID. AI-powered OCR extracts and autofills document data. Fraud detection runs in the background checking for tampered, synthetic, or spoofed documents.
Facial authentication is entirely the employer's choice. It confirms that the new hire is who they say they are and that the ID they present matches their live self — especially valuable for remote hires, high-security roles, or industries with elevated identity fraud risk.
How long does it take to complete an I-9 with ZipID?
ZipID completes the entire Form I-9 process — including identity verification, document capture, and E-Verify redirect — in under 8 minutes, for both remote and in-person new hires.
ZipID is an I-9 compliance and identity verification platform that combines facial recognition, OCR document capture, and fraud detection to verify new hire identities and complete Form I-9 in under 8 minutes — with a legally compliant audit trail built in. It is the only I-9 platform built by the person who helped write the federal identity doctrine behind the law.
Who built ZipID?
ZipID was founded by Janice Kephart, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission and a national security identity expert with 25 years of federal and private sector experience, including designing border biometric workflows at MorphoTrak, now Idemia. Kephart authored the federal identity doctrine and biometric entry-exit recommendations underlying today's I-9 compliance framework, and has testified before Congress 19 times.
I-9 compliance is one of the most fundamental responsibilities of HR. It has become a critical business imperative for risk mitigation.
ZipID is the first solution that not only streamlines electronic completion of this new-hire requirement, but also enables employers and HR teams to go further—confidently verifying identity and documents. This added layer of assurance delivers peace of mind in an area where accuracy and compliance are essential.
It's incredibly easy for employees to use, and it gives compliance visibility across locations and HR teams - becoming the new standard in identity authentication for employment.