There are a few occasions when we may reach out to you for personal information. One instance is when the AdSense payments team requires you to submit certain information in order to confirm your identity. When this happens, your AdSense account will have a temporary payment hold placed on it until you've confirmed this information.
How do I know if I'm affected?
If you're affected by this payment hold:
- We'll send an email to the email address you've specified in the "Payments > Settings" section of your AdSense account. This email will come from the payments team and will be sent from a Google email alias. In this email we'll ask you to provide some personal information.
- You'll see a red alert notification in your AdSense account which says that there's a payment hold on your account.
- On your "Transactions" page, you'll see that a payment has been issued to you but that there's also a payment hold on your account.
Frequently asked questions
If you do receive an email from the Google payments team, via a Google email alias, that asks for verification of your personal information, please do the following:
- Reply directly to the email.
- Provide all the necessary information or, in some cases, a copy of your documents.
Please reply to the email with the necessary information within 5 business days. Note that you won't be able to receive any payments until you provide this information.
Note that not all publishers are affected by this payment hold. This process is more common in countries with a high rate of fraud.
- Your date of birth
- Your country of birth
- The complete name of the payee listed on your account
- Your address
- Your nationality
- Your passport number
- Your national identity number
We may ask you to provide a copy of any or all of the following:
- Your passport or other government issued ID
- Proof of address (e.g., utility bill, bank statement)
- Our email will always come from an official Google email alias. For example, [email protected]. It will not come from an email address such as [email protected].
- We will never ask you for your bank account details, so please be cautious of any fraudulent emails which may do this.
