If you've just arrived in the UK to build your business, there's a good chance you've already hit this wall. You go to register your company, and the process asks you to prove who you are. Simple enough, except the easiest routes all assume you already have something British: a UK driving licence, a UK biometric residence permit, a passport with a chip that works with the app. But what if you don't have any of those yet?
It's one of the most common snags we hear about from founders in their first few weeks here, and it catches out people who are otherwise sailing through everything else. The good news is that it's a solvable problem, and once you know the shape of it, it stops feeling like a wall and starts feeling like a small admin task with a couple of clear paths through it.
Why this trips people up
Companies House now requires anyone setting up, running or controlling a UK company to verify their identity. This isn't a bank's internal box-ticking exercise anymore, it's a legal requirement introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, and it applies to new directors and people with significant control from the moment they're appointed.
The free, self-service route is GOV.UK One Login. It's straightforward if you have a UK passport, a UK photocard driving licence, a UK biometric residence permit or card, or an overseas passport with a biometric chip. If your passport doesn't have a chip, or you don't yet hold any UK-issued ID, the app simply won't accept what you've got. That's the exact spot where new arrivals get stuck, often after they've already sorted a lease, a SIM card and half of the rest of the "getting set up" list.
The route most people don't know about
There's an in-person option that solves this for a lot of founders: Post Office identity verification. You start the process online, choose the Post Office option, and you'll get a confirmation email with a barcoded customer letter. Take that letter and your original photo ID to a branch that offers in-branch verification, and staff there will scan your document and take your photo. Unlike the app, this route accepts a wider range of ID, including non-UK passports without a biometric chip. It typically takes a few minutes in branch, and you'll usually get your result by email within a day.
It's not glamorous, and it does mean an actual trip to a physical Post Office, but it closes the gap for exactly the people the app leaves behind.
Or let someone else do the verifying
The other option is to go through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, usually shortened to ACSP. These are firms, often accountants, solicitors or company formation agents, who've been approved by Companies House to carry out identity checks on your behalf. You give them your documents, they run the checks under their own supervised process, and they confirm your identity directly with Companies House. Once that's done, you get a personal code by email, the same code you'd have received through the free route, and you use it for every future filing.
This is often the quickest option for founders coming from overseas, since a good ACSP is used to working with documents that don't fit the app's narrower requirements. Many formation agents bundle this in with the company registration itself, so you can end up sorting both in one go rather than treating them as two separate jobs. It usually comes with a fee, so it's worth asking upfront what's included and comparing a couple of providers rather than going with the first one you find.
A quick gut check before you start
Before you touch any of this, it's worth working out which category you fall into. If you already have a UK photo driving licence or a biometric residence permit, the free app route will likely work first time. If you're relying on an overseas passport, check whether it has a biometric chip before you assume the app will reject you, it might not. And if you've already tried the self-service route and it's told you no, that's your cue to either book a Post Office slot or bring in an ACSP, rather than trying the same route again and hoping for a different result.
The bigger picture
None of this is a reflection of anything being wrong with your paperwork or your business. It's simply that the system was built with UK-based applicants as the default, and anyone arriving from elsewhere has to take one extra step to fit into it. Founders who've been through it will tell you the same thing: it feels like a genuine obstacle for about a week, and then it's a story you tell the next person who's stuck exactly where you were.
If you're working through this as part of setting up under the Innovator Founder visa route, it's exactly the kind of question worth raising in the Innovator International community. Chances are someone's hit the same wall in the last month and can tell you which branch, which provider, or which exact click got them through.
