Sept. 8, 2024
Ever wonder how online services keep your info safe and sound, while delivering a user experience that's sleek and simple? In an age where identity theft and fraud are more common than ever, developers now more than ever need to verify user phone numbers quickly and accurately. In this article we'll explore the Twilio phone verification API--a robust tool to amp up security and facilitate easier user validation. You can use it to secure your user accounts with two-factor authentication, and increase your conversion and trust with your users. By the end of this article, you'll know how to use it, what it can do, and how to use it to design a bomb-proof verification system that won't let you down.
Consider this if: You're a frontend dev who needs to validate users (using Twilio) You need phone verification up and running quickly, without painful regex and a bunch of backend code You want to validate your startup idea today and you don't want to spend time worrying about user registration So you're looking for a Twilio phone verification tutorial Or more accurately, a Twilio phone number verification tutorial I'm going to show you how to get phone verification up and running for your webapp in 5 minutes without writing any backend code.
The Twilio phone verification API is great for you as a developer to make sure the phone numbers your users give you are real, by verifying user phone numbers in your application using SMS, WhatsApp, email and other channels, and you have all these ways to communicate, you can be flexible and not ruin the user experience.
The most common way to use Twilio's Verification API is for 2FA. 2FA means "two-factor authentication" and it's a way to add a little extra security to your user accounts. At some point during login, or a critical transaction, you'll want to verify that the person who says they own the phone number actually does. Basically, the user would enter their phone number, and then the system would send a one-time passcode (OTP) or some other confirmation over the channel you choose. Now you're not only protecting your user's account, but you're also preventing bad actors from gaining access. For a lot of consumer applications, this is priority number one, because nothing else matters if your users aren't safe.
First, users initiate verification by providing their phone number directly in the application UI. Then the Twilio phone verification API handles the rest, sending a one-time code to the number the user provided, confirming the user's identity and verifying that they're in possession of their phone. And because the one-time code can be delivered through multiple channels, like email or SMS, users are more likely to receive and act on the verification message, reducing the chances they'll drop off the verification process.
It also significantly enhances user security when used for two-factor authentication. Many platforms use phone verification to provide an extra layer of security in the event that a password is compromised. For example, if a user attempts to log in from a new or unrecognized device or location, they may be asked to enter a one-time code sent to their phone number, providing one more hopefully meaningful layer of verification.
I recently looked into using Twilio Verify for phone verifications. There's a lot more to Twilio Verify than phone verification, a lot of other features that make it really easy to implement verification solutions. Real-time phone intelligence is one of them. You can get details on a phone number, like whether it's likely active or valid, which is super valuable for a good user experience.
There's also a mountain of documentation -- all the resources you need to learn how to integrate and best practices. So much support for a developer brand new to the Twilio platform. Plus messages are really customizable, so you can send messages that are more specific to your audience, and in turn, get higher engagement.
Twilio is a delight to code with. Just register for a Twilio account, grab your Account SID and Auth Token, download the appropriate helper libraries and you'll have a Twilio client up and running in minutes. Paired with customizable messaging, that means more time spent on rich user experiences and less time hitting walls.
With elaborate message customization and codec and format type support, the Twilio phone verification API enables businesses to communicate effectively and securely with users. That kind of flexibility is especially important in verticals where user trust and secure transactions are mission critical, like finance, healthcare and ecommerce. Because at the end of the day, integrating Twilio Verify doesn't just make things more secure, it adds trust and reliability between users and the services they depend on.
Phone verification has become table stakes in today's digital world. Whether it's completing a signup process or facilitating an online transaction, verifying that a user's phone number is real is essential for security and trust. Businesses are finding that having an efficient way to verify phone numbers is not only important for fraud prevention but for maintaining customer engagement and remaining compliant.
One of the largest values phone verification has is its ability to reduce fraud. If you can confirm the user has access to the phone number, you can be reasonably sure they are who they say they are. Most verification methods involve sending a one-time password (OTP) to the user's phone for them to return for access. This added step makes it very difficult for potential fraudsters to step in, and in a time when identity theft and synthetic identity fraud is on the rise, is crucial for user verification and your own protection.
Strong phone verification means better data accuracy, which means more conversions and more engagement. If businesses can trust their numbers, they'll have fewer situations and happier customers. If you're using something like Twilio for verification, you can trust that your customers on file are accurate and expedite your onboarding process. Customers will be able to sign up more easily and won't get frustrated with entering wrong information, and the company will see higher engagement as a result.
Customer trust is another big advantage in strong phone verification. If users know a company has strong verification, they will feel more comfortable transacting with that company, especially for sensitive transactions like banking or health services. This trust leads to customer loyalty and a positive reputation for the business. Good verification in general gives customers peace of mind knowing that their personal information is protected from potential threats.
In regulated industries like finance and healthcare, compliance is key. Phone verification fits neatly into the box of regulatory requirements. These industries often have strict identity-verification requirements, and by verifying user identity, phone verification helps to keep those industries and their customers safe. It's one more way to safeguard user data and avoid compliance penalties and helps businesses to easily stay in step with the regulations that impact their businesses.
Having a verification system is a win-win for businesses. It helps ensure that your company can continue to maintain customer trust and safety. The more verification measures a company has in place, the harder it is to disrupt—and the stronger a foundation that company has to keep growing and adapting as the technology and the threats evolve.
The Twilio phone verification API is the key to securing applications that require user verification. Twilio makes it easy to add verification so you can send OTP (One Time Password) cross channel over SMS or email. Here's how to configure the Twilio Verify service you want!
First you'll need to sign up for a Twilio account if you haven't already. After you have an account, head over to the Twilio console and you'll find your Account SID and Auth Token, your API call credentials, in the console so you can authenticate API calls. This is important because it enables your application to communicate safely and securely with Twilio's services. Don't share your Account SID or Auth Token with anybody you don't trust, because those credentials could be used to impersonate your application and make API calls on your behalf!
Once you have your API credentials, the next step is to set up a verification service. You can do this by navigating to the Twilio Verify portal, where you'll be able to create a new verification service and customize it to fit the needs of your application. This might mean specifying the channels for OTP delivery—SMS, email, WhatsApp, etc.—so that you can deliver OTPs in the way that's best for your users, and that they prefer, to improve their user experience. You might also enable fraud safeguards to help keep your verification process secure.
Once you've got your verification service up and running, you'll be ready to choose your preferred programming language and get started integrating the Twilio API into your application. Twilio has a variety of SDKs for many languages like Python, Node.js, Ruby, and Java, among others. Choose your language, then install the SDK using your language's package manager, like npm for Node.js or pip for Python. This will give you the tools you need to make API calls, process responses, and handle errors, so you can be up and running in no time.
Once the SDK is installed, the first thing you'll want to do is initialize the Twilio client and configure it with your Account SID and Auth Token to allow your application to connect to Twilio and start making authenticated requests. So if you're working in Node.js, you'd require the Twilio library and create a client instance, which will be used in a similar fashion for all of the API calls in this quickstart.
Once you've initialized your Twilio client, you're ready to create your first verification request. All this means is providing the user's phone number and the channel to send the OTP to. For example, if you wanted to verify a user via SMS, you'd use the Twilio SDK to send a verification code to the phone number. The OTP you send should be short lived -- it's usually valid for only a few minutes -- to make sure it's super secure.
You'll want to include error handling in your integration to gracefully manage any problems that may occur when you're making API calls. Common problems might include invalid phone numbers, rate limits exceeded, network issues, and more. Using try-catch blocks and response validation, your application can provide users with helpful messages or alternate options. Proper error handling not only makes your app more resilient, but it delivers a better user experience, proactively addressing issues.
Finally, test the whole verification process to ensure that the OTP is sent and received as expected and that your application functions as intended. You should be testing different scenarios like entering valid and invalid codes to ensure your app works correctly in many different situations. Use debugging techniques to identify and correct any problems that come up during testing to create a smooth and frictionless experience for the end user.
By following these steps for implementing the Twilio phone verification API, you'll have a robust user validation process that helps you protect your application. Interacting with your users in a reliable way by delivering OTPs not only helps you prevent fraud, but also helps you build trust with your users.
When you're using Twilio's Verify API, you can create a verification using Twilio's messaging service to talk to users, so you can end users' status runs in real-time, so you can respond instantly back to your application. Twilio's Verify API provides a collection of endpoints for that purpose (create verification request, check verification status, and get delivery). These endpoints are how applications like yours can work with the API. Each one of these things enables your application to communicate in a real-time and efficient way back to your application from Twilio's services, so you can verify users with ease. The API is designed to be used in a wide range of situations, and in a way that balances simplicity and power.
You begin verification always the same—by making an API request. It's a POST, and you need to send everything. At first, all you'll have is a phone number, and all you'll know is that you want to verify it. The request format is simple, but there's a bit of a twist. Depending on the particulars of your verification workflow, you might need to include more, or you might need to include less. Whether you're using voice or sms, whether you're customizing the message sent with the verification attempt. If you miss anything, you'll get errors, and nobody wants that.
One of the nice things about Twilio Verify API is that you can configure it to automatically choose the best verification channel based on the user's device. If a user has indicated that they prefer to receive SMS, but they aren't able to receive SMS for whatever reason, the system can automatically fall back to other methods like voice. In other words, if a user can't be reached by SMS, the system will try calling them instead! Not only does this feature make your verification process more reliable, it also builds trust with your users by ensuring that you can always get in touch with them. When users are reachable by multiple methods, the verification success rate increases, which can be critical for time-sensitive applications.
You'll see how versatile the Verify API is and how many different types of verification you can accomplish. Send one-time passcodes (OTPs) over SMS? Yes. Make voice calls? Sure. Send verification links over email? You better believe it. You have a lot of options for what will work best for your users! And you can easily tailor the experience to work for your users. For example, you might want to send SMS OTPs to younger users, but older users can receive the voice call. Customization like this can lead to higher user engagement and satisfaction!
You can customize verification messages when you use Twilio's API. Because then businesses can actually make that communication their own, which is important because it makes the user experience even better and feel more personal and comforting to the user. When brand voice is included in the verification process, users feel more secure and at home. For example, a banking app might want to text the user their bank name and service number, while a tech startup might prefer a casual-friendly tone. This kind of messaging can help your service differentiate and retain users through these critical verifications and re-entries.
It used to be really hard to forward SMS text messages to your email for free. And it was even harder to reply to those text messages from your email. You could do it for iPhone, or you could do it for Android. I'll show you how to do it for both.
Honestly, it's still way easier to forward text messages to our email on an Android. But if you're like me and you have a significant other who owns a Macbook, you probably want to forward your text messages from your Android while you're at work for ease of access and you don't have to check your phone all the time.
Or you're a giant dork like me and just like to read your text messages from your computer so you don't have to look down at your phone all day.
Don't worry, I won't judge. I'm also both of those things. I'll show you how whether you've got an iPhone or Android. I'm a good teacher like that. I'm also a dork like that. Also, I might judge you but I won't say it to your face. I'm not stupid enough to get punched in the face. And if you're one of my friends reading this, no, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about your other friend. Yeah, that guy. I dislike that guy. What a jerk. Anyway, let's get started. We'll do the iPhone instructions first.
You can forward SMS text messages to your email for free in a way that you've never seen before. But I'll show you an even easier way. It's also free, and you don't need to download anything.
You'll need to forward SMS to email on an Android with an app. If you know of a way to do it without an app, tell me in the comments. I'd love to try it.
When it comes to SMS delivery, especially for verification flows, high volume requests could be a sign that someone is trying to abuse your API, so it's important to have rate limiting and retry mechanisms in your app. Rate limiting is just that; you limit how frequently a user can make requests. A "cool down" to prevent being flooded with API requests. If a user tries to request SMSes too many times in a very short period of time, these limits will prevent you from getting overloaded. By implementing rate limiting, you're able to enforce fair treatment between abusers and non-abusers.
Rate limiting alone isn't enough: Retry mechanisms are key too. This allows for messages to be resent in case of transient failures (like network issues). This is key for good user experience! When you do this you should implement exponential backoff algorithms so that you're not overloading the network -- each retry should wait longer and longer before retrying. Once you have these in place, you'll be able to effectively manage your traffic and your messaging services will continue to be reliable no matter how many requests they have to handle.
Don't make up numbers. Don't have numbers in your output: Or only have numbers in your output.
Knowing how your SMS is used can help you optimize your message-sending. When you check your API usage once in a while—e.g. in the Twilio console—you get a feel for what traffic is passing through, so you can adjust how you send messages. When you observe patterns, you might notice things like traffic peaks, and you can time your messages accordingly, or you might see certain demographics, and use different sender IDs to improve your deliverability.
Checking your API usage helps you debug and optimize your SMS. When you audit your traffic regularly, you can see where you're weak, so you can optimize and refine your campaigns for better performance.
Adding multifactor authentication (MFA) is a great way to add an extra layer of security for sensitive operations in your app. You're basically verifying that a person is who they claim to be using more than one method--like asking for a password and then providing a code sent in a text message--and it makes it a lot harder for someone who shouldn't be accessing something to actually access it.
MFA dramatically decreases the likelihood that someone can gain access to user accounts and sensitive data just by guessing a password. If you're working on an application where people make financial transactions or need to store confidential information, one security breach can be a disaster. You should definitely include MFA in any application that involves user authentication.
Cybersecurity is a game of whack-a-mole so you need to make sure your app's security practices are constantly reviewed and updated. Following guidelines and best practices from trusted sources like Twilio is a good way to minimize the risk of sending SMS.
This can involve making sure your systems are using the latest and greatest encryption standards, the best practices for handling traffic/API requests, and staying compliant with the latest regulations for messaging systems.
Also, reviewing your security practices periodically will not only help you catch any holes you have, but help you fortify your defenses against future holes. It's a good idea to allocate resources, either internally or through a third party, to do security audits to make sure that your messaging is secure and robust.
By following the above best practices for SMS delivery and security, you can give your users a reliable messaging service that also keeps their data secured that they can trust you with.
When using products such as Twilio for phone verification, there are several issues you might encounter along the way that break phone verification. It's key to know what these are, and how to get around them so that users never get hung up. With a little bit of planning, user-friendly solutions, and the right support, businesses can navigate these verification issues successfully and keep their users successful.
Phone verification has many points of failure you'll want to identify early. Some failure points include undelivered OTPs, mistyped phone numbers, and undelivered messages altogether. To provide a good user experience, you'll want helpful error messages that will help people troubleshoot quickly. For example, if the OTP isn't received, an error message can guide them to check the number they entered and even offer to resend the code. This will help support troubleshooting and will give users assurance that you've got their back and are working in their best interest.
And then regardless, a lot of users are going to mistype their phone number, and that can be a huge headache. Real-time validation on the phone number input field can save you from this. For example, if you show an error message as soon as the user isn't formatting their number correctly, you'll get far less support requests. Use international telephone input plugins to collect phone numbers from users.
People who struggle with SMS verification will be more successful when you give them options. You can let users verify via email, and even voice, so no one ever gets stuck, and everyone can access their account even when SMS isn't a good option.
Many people don't have access to reliable SMS specs because of network or device constraints, and multi-channel capabilities have been proven to significantly improve completion rates for verification.
If a user fails an SMS verification, they can receive a voice call to receive a verification code to verify over an alternate channel. Similarly, email verification may be preferable for people who don't do SMS for privacy reasons. The more options you offer, the more people will interact, which means you'll see better results on your verification.
Often, users don't receive verification codes because their device settings are preventing the app from sending notifications to the user, or their SMS client from delivering the message. So you want to instruct your users to check their settings to ensure notifications are enabled for your app, and that your app has the necessary SMS permissions. For instance, many phones have battery saving features that can block notifications. You can instruct users to adjust notification priorities with some kind of in-app or in a FAQ on your website.
In this way, you're empowering users to troubleshoot some issues on their own, and taking a proactive approach to customer support. Explicit instructions on how users can check app permissions, e.g. 'Settings > Apps > [App Name] > Permissions,' could also be an educational opportunity, equipping users to be more self-sufficient when they run into verification issues, ultimately reducing the support burden.
For easier troubleshooting, you can leverage logs and monitoring to monitor how long it takes for your users to receive their verifications and where the holdup is.
In practice, this might look like monitoring how long users take to receive their verification codes and identifying any underlying health or connectivity of your system as a whole.
You'll be able to notice trends, like when your system gets the most usage (and where most of the latencies come from) when your system has analytics. Armed with a feedback loop to action on this data to consistently improve your system, you'll be well placed to enjoy the benefits of this simple advice over time. For instance, if you notice any common delays, you can fix yourself for your system.
Finally, be sure to have up-to-date documentation available to help your users and support team resolve common verification issues. With a robust knowledge base of FAQs, common troubleshooting steps, and bypass instructions at their disposal, users and their support teams feel empowered. Make sure the documentation accurately reflects the current common issues and quickest bypass routes, so users understand how the verification process works.
Keeping this documentation up to date with user feedback will help keep the information fresh and relevant. By making sure users have easy access to bypass and resolve common issues quickly, you can promote self-service and troubleshooting and improve their overall experience.
As companies grow and get more users, you want to scale your verification system effectively. One of the first things you'll want to do is start load balancing. All this means is that you send the verification requests to a few different servers so that you don't send all of them to one server, especially when lots of people are doing the verification. There are a few reasons why you don't want to send all of the verifications to the same server. One, when you overload servers you will get slowed down response times, and even service outages, which is a bad user experience. By load balancing, you can keep performance high even as more people want to give you money, which means a way smoother verification process and a lot of happier users. Also, if you have a good load balancing setup, anytime you want to add new servers, it's easy to add them to the system as well.
Another thing you'll want to do to scale your verification system is go through your API and make sure it's architected correctly. A well-architected API can handle a lot more traffic without slowing down and there are a few ways to make sure that can happen. One of the biggest things that you'll want to consider is if you can implement a microservices architecture. By doing this you can scale different parts of the system in isolation, depending on what part of the system is getting hit. For instance, if you suddenly get a lot more user verification requests, you'll only need to scale up the user verification service and not all of it, which can save you a lot of resources. Also, if you do asynchronous processing for your verification tasks, you can get more throughput, and therefore handle more requests at the same time. By making this architectural change, you can prepare your system for future growth and be able to handle user requests in a timely manner.
You'll also want to use Twilio's global reach to scale your verification system. What I mean by this is that you want to verify users over phone numbers all around the world so you can reach a global user base. If you want to verify users in different regions, Twilio has your back. With Twilio, you can be compliant with local regulations and make sure you are reaching users in the most legal way. This is really important because when you're dealing with communications and user data there is a lot of regulation and getting through that is a huge pain. With Twilio's platform you can easily adapt how you verify your users so you can be culturally sensitive and legally compliant with how you verify users in different markets. With this, not only are you optimizing the user experience for people who actually give you money, but you're also being compliant with the law.
You're only as strong as your weakest link -- and when it comes to verification, your weakest link will be the same thing every time. The important thing is to know what it is and how to strengthen it.
You want to monitor user engagement because it tells you how well your verification is working. Key metrics like completion rates, average verification times, and user feedback should be tracked continuously so you can identify what's already working well, and what you need to tune up. This will help you make any necessary changes as you scale and grow, and will help you scale what's already working well. It will also help you watch how users are using your verification over time, and identify patterns to improve. By combining feedback with analytics, you can optimize the user experience, which will help you retain and even create users.
But how do you see your verification being used more or less as you scale? How do you see you're making any difference in your user's engagement as you scale? Real-time analytics
Real-time analytics are critical to observing how your scaling efforts are impacting how users are interacting with your verification. If you can see what users are doing right now, and how your system is performing right now, you can make changes to increase the engagement of your verification overall. If you can observe verification request trends, completion rates, and where time is lost, you can see where your system is broken and fix it quickly. If you can see how your scaling efforts are impacting the user experience, you can be proactive and react before you have a verification system that doesn't work.
Scaling your verification effectively won't just allow you to keep up with user growth, it'll allow you to keep your users happy, and retained. By load balancing, improving your API architecture, going global, monitoring engagement, and using real-time analytics, you can create a rock-solid verification strategy that serves your users' needs and your business needs.
The Twilio phone verification API allows developers to easily verify user phone numbers with SMS, WhatsApp, email, and other channels. Apps can use the API to implement 2FA, a more secure way to verify that users are who they say they are. Twilio Verify is easy to use and offers features like real-time phone intelligence and custom messaging. As digital transactions become more prevalent, phone verification is key to preventing fraud, ensuring data quality, and building user trust. When you are implementing, make sure to use secure transmission, be available in many verification channels, and have strong debugging documentation. Also, you will want to scale your verification systems so you can verify more users while still maintaining high quality service, which is essential for building user trust and confidence in many different types of applications.
The Twilio phone verification API lets you verify a user's phone number in your app. It sends different types of messages (SMS, Whatsapp, email, etc) to the user, so you can help protect your users and give them a seamless user experience.
The API supports 2FA, providing an extra layer of security to help ensure that the people signing in to your app are who they say they are. Usually, this is done by sending a one-time passcode (OTP) to the user's phone, so if a password is stolen, the attacker still can't get in without the phone.
To get started you'll need to sign up for a Twilio account, grab some API credentials (Account SID and Auth Token), sign up for a verification service with customizable channels for OTP delivery, pull in the right SDK, and initialize the Twilio client to handle verification requests.
Twilio Verify has realtime phone intelligence, customizable messaging, awesome developer documentation, and multiple OTP delivery options which all add up to a simple integration process and a great user experience.
Phone verification is important for so many reasons including security and user trust. It's how companies fight fraud, keep their data clean, and stay compliant. It's how they engage users more and reduce the risk of identity theft.
Some best practices are being able to handle high volumes of requests with rate limiting and retries, securing data in transit with HTTPS, monitoring your API usage for insights, implementing MFA, and keeping up to date with security practices to ensure resilience against threats.
Typical troubleshooting steps include checking for input errors, providing alternate verification methods (like email or voice calls), telling the user to check their device settings for notification permissions, and putting in logging and monitoring to track how your requests are performing.
When scaling an authentication system, businesses can use a load balancer to manage requests distribution, use a microservices architecture to scale easily, use Twilio's global reach for compliance, monitor user engagement metrics, and use real-time analytics to improve the user experience.
Custom messaging lets you white label the verification messages to match your brand, increasing user trust and engagement. The more you can customize the messages, the more you can make the user feel at home and the less you can expect them to churn during a critical verification event.
A developer integrating the twilio phone verification api
SMS Check