We absolutely hear you on this. We would really prefer to not have to do it. One, it's a pain for our bidders, especially for trustworthy bidders like yourself. Two, it costs us a lot of money to do these.

More of the governments we serve want/require more assurance and accountability for bidders. Unlike you, there are people who bid and do not honor their winning bids (defaulting bidders) across all of these online providers. Without verifying ID's, we have no way of truly knowing if these people are who they say they are, even when verifying credit card information. As you may know, there are a lot of scammers out there.

When we have defaulting bidders, it causes problems for our good bidders. These unidentified people bid against the honest bidders, then do not follow through. In this case, the selling agency will typically go to the next highest bidder or relist the item. This is a negative situation for everyone involved - the good bidder who lost, the selling agency, and us.

Our competitors, whether indirect or direct, are all moving to this as well. In addition, many live auctioneers are moving to digitally capturing IDs whether online or at the auction site. Governments have been switching to Municibid from other providers because we have this in place.

For example, if we have a defaulting bidder, we need to be able to access the ID in the event we need to provide this information to the government seller, or as part of legal proceedings.

Again, we know how much of a pain this is, and how intrusive taking a selfie and submitting your ID can feel.

When you are ready you can go to https://municibid.com/account/Idverificationstart to verify your ID.