Frequently asked questions

You can create a Papertrail account and submit your first candidate in under 10 minutes, with no integration required — the dashboard is enough to run a full check package on day one. If you want API or HRMS integration, our team typically has it live within a day.

Papertrail checks against 20+ government and private sources, including Aadhaar eKYC, PAN/NSDL, DigiLocker, EPFO and UAN records, NCRB and eCourts, district and sessions courts, MCA/RoC filings, credit bureaus, GSTN, global sanctions lists including OFAC, UN and EU, FIU-IND, university registrars, and India Post for address confirmation. Field verification adds physical visits anywhere in India.

Most Papertrail cases close in under 24 hours. Database checks such as identity and sanctions screening return in minutes; education and court record checks depend on how quickly a registrar or court responds and can take longer. Because every check in a package runs concurrently rather than one after another, total turnaround is set by the slowest check, not the sum of all of them.

A flag is not a rejection. Papertrail marks the specific check, explains in plain language what differs and from which source, and leaves the decision to you. The candidate is notified and can supply clarifying evidence, which is attached to the case file. Only your team can close a case as rejected, and the reason is recorded in the audit trail.

Yes, our field agents can visit residential and business addresses anywhere in India to verify claims that cannot be resolved digitally. This includes visual inspection of premises, document collection, and neighbor verification where permitted by law.

Yes. Papertrail is built around the consent, purpose-limitation and storage-limitation duties in India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Candidates give explicit, timestamped consent for each check before it runs, personal data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is role-scoped and logged, and retention schedules purge case data on the timetable you configure.

Yes — a background check on a job candidate in India requires their informed consent, and Papertrail will not start one without it. The candidate sees exactly which checks have been requested, consents to each individually, and receives a copy of the consent record. If a check returns a discrepancy, they are given an opportunity to respond before the case closes.

Papertrail candidate data is processed and stored primarily in Indian regions. Sub-processors are documented and disclosed on request, documents are held in access-scoped storage reachable only through signed, expiring URLs, and access to a case file is logged and reviewed.

Papertrail handles the end-to-end consent workflow. Candidates receive a digital consent form explaining what data will be collected, why, and how it will be used. Consent is recorded, with the notice that was shown, before a check begins — which is what the DPDP Act asks of the employer commissioning the check.

Primarily, yes. Papertrail infrastructure, databases and backups are hosted in Indian cloud regions. Some providers may process limited data outside India where a service requires it, under contract and with appropriate safeguards — so we say "primarily in India" rather than guaranteeing that every copy never crosses a border, which no provider operating across jurisdictions will let us promise. If data residency is a procurement requirement, ask us and we will tell you exactly how your data is handled, including provider, region and our full sub-processor list.

Yes. Papertrail exposes a documented REST API and webhooks, so a case can be initiated the moment a candidate reaches the offer stage in your ATS, and status changes flow back automatically. Pre-built connectors cover Keka, DarwinBox, Zoho People, Lever, Workday, BambooHR and SAP SuccessFactors, and bulk CSV upload is available for teams that prefer not to integrate at all.

Papertrail emits a webhook event at every stage transition — case created, check started, check closed, discrepancy raised, report ready — signed so you can verify it came from us. Reports are delivered as both structured JSON and a formatted PDF, and can be pushed to your dashboard, emailed, or synced straight back into your ATS record.

In Papertrail, AI handles the reading and reconciling, not the deciding. Document intelligence extracts fields and cross-checks them against the case file, and fraud models flag tampering and reuse — but every final verdict is confirmed against a primary source, and anything flagged is reviewed by a trained analyst before the report closes. Low-confidence AI decisions escalate to a human automatically rather than being published.

Yes. Our platform sends real-time webhook payloads for every status change, check completion, and final report delivery. You can configure multiple endpoints and subscribe only to the events your application needs.

Cost depends on which checks are in the package and how much fieldwork they need. Instant database checks such as identity and sanctions screening are cheapest; physical address visits and court record searches cost more because they involve people on the ground. Papertrail starts at ₹499 per candidate for an essential package, with per-candidate pricing so the cost of a hire stays predictable.

No. Papertrail has no setup fee and no minimum volume — you can run a single check and stop. Annual plans carry a discount, and organisations hiring at scale can move to custom pricing with an SLA-backed turnaround commitment and a dedicated account manager.

Absolutely. You can build custom verification packages tailored to different roles in your organisation, or trigger individual checks via the API. You only pay for what you use.