{"article":{"id":36324309408407,"url":"https://plaid.zendesk.com/api/v2/help_center/en-us/articles/36324309408407.json","html_url":"https://support.plaid.com/hc/en-us/articles/36324309408407-Why-is-Identity-data-required-before-creating-a-Consumer-Report","author_id":5390778350871,"comments_disabled":true,"draft":false,"promoted":false,"position":0,"vote_sum":0,"vote_count":0,"section_id":36311990432791,"created_at":"2025-11-13T22:07:28Z","updated_at":"2026-06-01T02:00:02Z","name":"Why is Identity data required before creating a Consumer Report?","title":"Why is Identity data required before creating a Consumer Report?","source_locale":"en-us","locale":"en-us","outdated":false,"outdated_locales":[],"edited_at":"2026-06-01T02:00:02Z","user_segment_id":null,"permission_group_id":1121794,"content_tag_ids":[],"label_names":[],"body":"

When building with Plaid’s Consumer Report endpoints, it’s crucial to collect identity data about your customer first — before you ever initiate the CRA report flow. When creating a user for Consumer Report, you must supply complete identity data in the identity object on /user/create.

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Legacy integrations (created before December 10, 2025): these supply the same data through the consumer_report_user_identity object on /user/create instead. The required fields and the upstream requirement to collect identity before initiating CRA are identical.

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CRA endpoints require customer information (e.g., name, address, date of birth) to create and process the consumer report.

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Typical recommended flow

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1. Onboard your user (“Sign Up” flow)\n

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Ask for customer PII such as name, address, date of birth, and phone number.

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2. Create or update the user record\n

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Store all retrieved identity information as the official record for this user in your system.

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3. Initiate CRA Requests\n

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Once you have full customer information:

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What if you didn’t collect Identity up front?

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As a last resort, if you do not have an onboarding step to pull this PII, you’ll need to:

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  1. Send them through Plaid Link with the identity product enabled.
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  2. Once Link completes, call /identity/get using their new access token.
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  3. Use that returned data to populate the user record, then create the CRA user via /user/create.
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  4. Ask the user to go through Plaid Link again, this time initialized with the appropriate CRA products.
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  5. Generate the report once the user has successfully completed the link flow.
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