The Exact IDs USPS Accepts for Form 1583 (And the Address Rules Nobody Explains)

By Raphael Okas · Published: 2026-08-26

The Form Came Back Signed, Notarized, and Useless

Every mailbox operator knows this moment. A new customer finally returns their Form 1583. It is signed, it is witnessed, the IDs are attached. Then you look closer: the photo ID is fine, but the second document is a bank statement. Or a utility bill. Or a Social Security card. None of those count, and now you are restarting the slowest part of onboarding with a customer who thought they were done.

Rejected IDs are the number one reason 1583s bounce, and they bounce because the rules are specific in ways nobody explains up front. USPS does not ask for "two forms of ID." It asks for one ID from an exact photo ID list and one ID from an exact address ID list, printed as checkboxes right on the form. Anything not on those lists does not exist as far as compliance is concerned.

Here are the exact lists from the current PS Form 1583 (June 2024 edition) and the Domestic Mail Manual, plus straight answers to the two address questions operators ask most: does the customer need a U.S. address, and can they use your store's address as their home address?

The Two-ID Rule, Precisely

Every applicant needs two different documents:

A photo ID that proves who they are (Box 8 on the form)
An address ID that proves where they live or conduct business (Box 9 on the form)

Both must be current. An expired document is not acceptable, full stop. The ID types get recorded on the form, and copies of both documents must be attached. Under CRD rules you also upload the ID images to USPS and certify quarterly that everything on file is still valid.

Acceptable Photo IDs (Box 8e)

These are the checkboxes printed on the form itself:

U.S. state, territory, or tribal driver's license or nondriver's ID card
Passport (U.S. or foreign)
U.S. Permanent Resident Card
Certificate of Naturalization
Uniformed Service ID
U.S. Access Card
Matricula Consular (Mexico)
NEXUS card (Canada)
U.S. university ID card

DMM 608.10.0 also recognizes a corporate ID card from a U.S. corporation in good standing, USCIS-issued IDs, and government smart cards like the DOD Common Access Card. The common thread: government-issued (or institutionally verifiable), bearing a clear photograph, and traceable to the person in front of you.

Acceptable Address IDs (Box 9g)

The second document must contain the home address the applicant wrote on the form. The options printed on the form:

U.S. state, territory, or tribal driver's license or nondriver's ID card
Current lease
Mortgage or deed of trust
Home or vehicle insurance policy
Vehicle registration card
Voter card

The DMM additionally accepts a second document from the primary photo ID list, or a Form I-94, as address verification.

The Driver's License Trap

Notice the driver's license appears on both lists. It can only be used for one of them. The form says so explicitly: it "may be used for only one of the IDs (either photo ID or address ID), not for both." A customer who hands you a driver's license and nothing else has given you half of what USPS requires. This single footnote causes more resubmissions than any other rule on the form.

Never Acceptable

USPS spells these out in DMM 608.10.5:

Social Security cards
Birth certificates
Credit cards
Similar documents that are not official ID

Utility bills and bank statements are not on any acceptable list either, even though customers offer them constantly because every other address-verification process in their life accepts them. Form 1583 does not.

Does the Customer Need a U.S. Address?

No. This surprises operators who assume USPS is a domestic-only system, and it matters because international customers are some of the best customers a virtual mailbox business can have.

The current form settles it: the applicant's home address block includes a Country field (Boxes 4j and 9f). A customer in London, Lagos, or Manila can list their actual foreign home address. Their foreign passport is an acceptable photo ID straight off the form's own checklist. Their address ID simply has to contain that same foreign address, so a current lease or insurance policy from their home country does the job.

The signature still has to be witnessed, but that no longer requires an airplane. USPS accepts signatures witnessed in the physical or virtual real-time audio/video presence of the CMRA or a notary commissioned in a U.S. state, so a remote online notarization session covers a customer on any continent.

What trips operators up with international applicants is not the rules but the matching: the address on the address ID must agree with the address written on the form, character for character, in whatever format that country uses. A mismatch is a rejection whether the address is in Ohio or Osaka.

Can the U.S. Address Be Their CMRA Address?

Here is the question behind the question. A customer signs up precisely because they do not want to use their home address. So can they just put your store's address, or another virtual mailbox they already rent, in the home address box?

No, and this one is structural. The home address on Form 1583 is where the applicant "resides or conducts business," and USPS reserves the right to verify exactly that. Your CMRA address fails this test three different ways:

Nobody resides there. The entire premise of the form is connecting a real person at a real location to the mail you hand them. A mailbox address pointing at another mailbox address verifies nothing.
No acceptable address ID can back it up. The address ID must contain the address in the home address box. There is no lease, mortgage, insurance policy, or vehicle registration that lists a PMB as someone's residence.
USPS checks for it. CMRA addresses are registered with USPS through the CRD. An application listing a known CMRA address as a home address is exactly the pattern the registration database exists to catch.

The same logic rules out P.O. Boxes and any other mail-receiving address. The home address must be a physical place where the person actually lives or operates their business. That address stays private; it lives on a form in your records and in the CRD, not on the customer's public mail. Explaining that distinction up front converts hesitant privacy-minded customers far better than letting them attempt a workaround that bounces.

The Part That Does Not End at Signup

Collecting the right two IDs once is the easy half. The obligations that follow are continuous:

IDs on file must stay current. A driver's license that expires two years into the customer relationship quietly breaks the file.
ID images and 1583 data must be uploaded to the CRD, with quarterly certification every January, April, July, and October that your records are accurate and unexpired.
Every new addressee on an existing box needs their own form and their own two IDs.

An operator can absolutely run all of this on vigilance and a spreadsheet. Most just have better things to do at the counter. Innbocks checks ID types against the actual USPS lists during customer onboarding, blocks the unacceptable documents before a notary ever gets involved, captures expiration dates, and flags expiring IDs for renewal automatically. The two-ID rule stops being a thing you remember and becomes a thing that simply happens.