How do I integrate MRZ scanning into my app or website?

Integrating MRZ scanning typically means adding a software development kit (SDK) to your mobile app, or an SDK/library to your web application, along with connecting to an API if any part of the processing happens server-side rather than entirely on-device.

For mobile apps, this usually looks like installing a native SDK for iOS and/or Android, which handles the camera interface, capture guidance, and extraction logic, then returning structured results (extracted fields, confidence scores, any flags from cross-validation) to your app through a defined interface. Most vendors provide this as a drop-in component that handles the camera UI itself, so you're not building document-capture screens from scratch, just calling the SDK and receiving results.

For web applications, an in-browser SDK can provide similar camera-based scanning directly within a website, without requiring users to download a separate app, which matters for use cases like online account signup where asking someone to install an app first would add friction and likely reduce completion rates.

If any processing happens server-side, either because the vendor's architecture works that way, or because you're handling image uploads rather than live camera capture, you'll also integrate a REST API, sending document images and receiving back extracted, validated data in a structured format like JSON.

Integration timelines vary by vendor and by how much customization your use case requires, but for a fairly standard implementation, developers commonly report getting a working integration up within a day or two using well-documented SDKs, with additional time needed for any custom workflow logic, UI branding, or business rules like age-verification thresholds layered on top.

ScanDoc offers SDKs for iOS and Android along with API access for server-side integration, and provides documentation aimed at getting a working scan-to-data flow running quickly, whether you're building a fully mobile onboarding flow, a web-based signup process, or a hybrid of the two depending on where your users are coming from.