In this short tutorial we will guide you through the whole process of payment address PIN verification which is needed to get your very first payout from your Google AdSense account. What does the PIN verification letter card from Google look like? What to do if you didn’t receive your PIN card and how long do you usually have to wait? We’ll show and explain all this in a few moments.
Scroll down to see what the verification letter actually looks like!
- AdSense PIN Verification – What Is It All About?
- Is The Address Verification Mandatory? – Do You Have To Do It?
- Will Your Ads Still Show When You’re Waiting For The Address Verification?
- What Does The Address Verification Letter Card Look Like?
- How Long Do You Have To Wait For Your Verification Letter?
- What To Do If You Haven’t Received Your PIN?
- Are There Any Other Verification Methods Available?
AdSense PIN Verification – What Is It All About?
To receive your first payout from Google AdSense, you not only need to reach the minimum payment threshold in your payment currency, but you also have to verify your payment address.
For better accuracy of address verification (and to prevent any fraud), Google has implemented a physical payment verification process via traditional mail.
This verification process involves Google sending you a physical letter to your supplied payment address which includes your 6-digit verification PIN number.
After receiving the letter you are supposed to enter the PIN number in your Google AdSense publisher dashboard to complete the verification process.
While this seems simple enough, many people have different questions and doubts when it comes to the whole process.
As we’ve completed the verification quite some time ago, we’re here to help you answer all your questions connected with the AdSense PIN verification via traditional post. Read on!
Is The Address Verification Mandatory? – Do You Have To Do It?
Yes, the address PIN verification is a necessary requirement to receive a payout from Google AdSense.
There is no way around it, aside from trying out one of the other payment address verification methods should the first one fail for one reason or the other. More on that later.
When will you have to verify your payment address? If you’re an AdSense user for some time already, you might be wondering why you haven’t been prompted to do this yet.
The reason for this, is that for the verification mail to be issued, you have to reach the verification threshold. The verification threshold is, at the time of writing this article set at $10, or ten dollars equivalent in different currencies all over the world.
An important note here is that the address verification letter won’t be sent to you if you were prompted for identity verification and you haven’t finished the identity verification process. Keep that in mind.
Without verifying your payment address, you won’t be able to receive any payments from Google AdSense.
Will Your Ads Still Show When You’re Waiting For The Address Verification?
When your address verification letter has been sent out and you’re waiting for it to arrive your ads will keep showing on all your AdSense connected sites and your YouTube channels until you complete the verification, or until 4 months pass.
If 4 months have passed and you still haven’t completed the verification process, your AdSense Ads will stop showing.
Your Ads will also stop showing if you input an incorrect PIN number 3 times, so don’t try to guess the number at random!
What Does The Address Verification Letter Card Look Like?
A vital question when waiting for your AdSense address verification letter to come in the mail is: what does it actually look like?
Well, here is the version of the verification letter that we received (with all the personal information and critical data blurred out) – see it below.
Here is what the PIN verification letter looks like when you open it. It contains your 6-digit long verification PIN, alongside the instructions for the verification process which you can also find on the official Google support page here. On the top part of the card you can see the Google watermark pattern. Once again, all personal details have been blurred out on the image.
Remember that your PIN verification letter is a private form of communication between you and Google LLC, which means that you shouldn’t publish or share any kind of private information contained within it.
Don’t share your PIN with anyone and remember that your address and personal info are included on the letter before throwing the letter away after successful verification.
How Long Do You Have To Wait For Your Verification Letter?
According to Google, the average time for the address verification letter to arrive is anywhere from 2 weeks to more than 4 weeks overall. For us, the verification letter took about 2 weeks to arrive.
Remember that the delivery time will depend on many different factors, the most important one being the efficiency and overall quality of the postal service in your country, state or region.
If you leave in a remote location, or far from large cities, your PIN might take even longer to arrive. Take your location into account in your own delivery time estimates.
Additionally, according to Google support docs, Google has exactly 1 week to generate and send out the letter with your personal PIN number, so in most cases your PIN number won’t arrive earlier than 2 weeks after the verification request.
What to do if more than 4 weeks have passed and you still haven’t received your address verification letter in your mail? Let’s get straight to that.
What To Do If You Haven’t Received Your PIN?
There are a few situations in which your PIN might not arrive, most common of them being:
- You’ve entered a wrong/non-existent payment address in your AdSense account settings. Correct your payment address and request the verification PIN letter again. Make sure that your address is spelled correctly and can be easily recognized by your local post office.
- Too little time has passed. If less than 1 week has passed since the time you requested your address verification letter, it might not even be sent out yet. Check the date on which the letter has been sent out and wait for at least 2-3 weeks. After that you can request another PIN letter to be sent out.
- The letter was lost in transit. While this is uncommon, it might be the case. If so, wait for 3 weeks from the day the address verification letter was sent out, and then request another letter to be sent to you from your AdSense publisher dashboard. You can do this up to 3 times.
Remember that you can always request another address verification letter to be sent out. The only requirement for that is that 3 weeks have to pass since your previous request.
You can request a replacement PIN up to 3 times, so in total you can receive up to 4 PIN verification letters from AdSense.
What if you’ve already requested additional PIN letters 3 times and none have came? Then, your next option is using the AdSense PIN Troubleshooter utility provided by Google for exactly these kind of situations.
You will be prompted to contact the Google support team via a supplied contact form. More on that in the next paragraph.
Are There Any Other Verification Methods Available?
The main way to verify your AdSense payment address is to do so with a PIN sent to you by Google via traditional mail, however is this method fails, you’re not out of options yet.
If for whatever reason your main letter and the 3 replacement letters containing a verification PIN won’t arrive at your location and substantial amount of time has passed, you can use the official AdSense PIN Troubleshooter to contact Google support and request verification using different methods.
In the form supplied by the troubleshooter tool, you will be asked to provide your full name, contact email address and your AdSense publisher ID.
Then, you will be prompted to send a document which will allow Google to verify your payment address without the PIN you had trouble receiving.
At this time, the documents you can use for verification are: your government issued ID, or a bank statement, telephone bill or rent receipt with your name and address clearly visible.
Remember that the verification method via Google support is a fallback method, and should be used only when the traditional post verification process fails.
If you still have trouble, check the official Google AdSense PIN verification troubleshooting support article to learn more.