How Much Does Remote I-9 Verification Cost? 2026 Prices Compared
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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released version 32 of the E-Verify Interface Control Agreement (ICA) on September 22, 2026. The ICA is the technical rulebook for every software vendor and E-Verify employer agent that sends cases to E-Verify on an employer's behalf, so this isn't a new regulation and Form I-9 doesn't change. Vendors have until March 31, 2027 to pass E-Verify's new acceptance testing and switch over, and the v31 connection is deprecated after that date.
The two changes employers will notice are that a vendor can now enroll you in E-Verify directly, and that every case your vendor sends will tell E-Verify more than it does today. Each case will name the hiring site where the employee works, say whether Section 2 documents were reviewed remotely, record how an expired-looking Employment Authorization Document (EAD) or green card is extended, and carry the name of the software that sent it.
Until now, an E-Verify employer agent enrolled each client by clicking through the E-Verify web application one screen at a time, entering the employer category, company information, NAICS code, hiring sites, and the person who signs the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). That's still the process in E-Verify's employer agent guide, and for a company with a lot of locations it's slow.
Version 32 adds an Enrollment API, which lets your vendor build the whole enrollment inside its own software and send it to E-Verify in one request, with company details, hiring sites, and contacts together. The category and industry codes come from E-Verify's own reference lists, so the entries validate the first time. E-Verify creates the account in pending status and emails the MOU link to your signatory.
| Enrollment step | Before v32 | With v32 |
|---|---|---|
| Company information | Agent keys it into E-Verify's web screens | Vendor submits it from its own platform in one enrollment request |
| Hiring sites | Added in the web app, one at a time or by bulk upload | Created, edited, and deleted by API; up to 5,000 sites per batch |
| MOU signature | Emailed link, 24 hours to sign; agent resends from the web app | Emailed link, 24 hours to sign; vendor resends from its own platform |
| Account status | Checked in the web app | Vendor checks it automatically; the account turns active once the MOU is signed |
For a single-location employer this saves an afternoon, but for a restaurant group, a staffing firm, or a retailer with hundreds of stores, the hiring-site list was always the slow part, and it's exactly the part v32 automates. Your MOU signatory still signs personally within the 24-hour window, so it's worth telling that person the email is coming.
Faster enrollment also speeds up remote hiring, because DHS only allows the optional alternative procedure (remote document review by live video) at hiring sites that are enrolled in E-Verify and in good standing. An employer that needs remote Section 2 next week needs E-Verify running at the right sites first.
The Enrollment API is optional, and a vendor only gets access after passing two separate E-Verify acceptance tests, one for cases and one for enrollment, so ask whether yours plans to offer it.
"Enrollment is the part of E-Verify nobody budgets time for," says Jed Butler, CEO of i9 Intelligence. "The case work is fast. What slows a multi-location employer down is getting every site entered correctly and catching the signatory before the MOU link expires. Moving that into the vendor's system means a new client can be running cases sooner, and for remote hires that means getting to remote Section 2 sooner too."
Under v32, every new E-Verify case has to include a hiring site. The vendor pulls the list of valid sites for your account and attaches one to each case, so E-Verify will know which location every new hire belongs to.
Remote hires take a little more thought, since the ICA says a remote employee should be tied to the hiring site responsible for completing their Form I-9. E-Verify's employer agent guidance adds that when a third-party employer agent completes the I-9 for a remote hire, the hiring site is the agent's location and not the employee's home. An employee attached to a site that doesn't participate in E-Verify can't be verified at all.
Most of the work here is keeping the list current. Stores open and close and warehouses get consolidated, and once your vendor moves to v32, a site list in E-Verify that has drifted from the one in your HR system will send cases to the wrong location or stop them from going through.
The hiring-site list is where multi-location rollouts stall. i9 Intelligence is building v32 support now, including the new enrollment tools, and we already enroll clients and run E-Verify as their E-Verify employer agent at no extra cost, with remote Section 2 for new hires anywhere in the U.S. Schedule a free compliance call to map your sites before the v32 cutover.
Every case your vendor creates now has to answer two yes-or-no questions:
Form I-9 has had an alternative-procedure checkbox in Section 2 since the 08/01/2023 edition. Under v32, E-Verify also receives that answer for every case submitted through software, right next to the hiring site, so DHS will have a case-level record of which employers and which sites use remote review.
That record makes the existing rules easier to check. An employer that offers remote review at a site has to offer it consistently to everyone at that site, or limit it to remote hires only without a discriminatory purpose, and has to keep clear copies, front and back, of every document examined remotely. An audit that compares your remote-review answers in E-Verify against the copies in your I-9 files will find any gaps quickly. Our guide to remote I-9 verification covers the full procedure.
Sometimes an employee presents a document that looks expired but is still valid through an extension, and v32 now asks the vendor to record exactly how it's extended.
| Document presented | What the case now records |
|---|---|
| Expired EAD (Form I-766) with an extension | The extension method: a Form I-797 or I-797C notice (with its document number), a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Federal Register notice, or a Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) Federal Register notice. For TPS or DED, the specific country. |
| Expired Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551) with a receipt notice | The Form I-797 or I-797C document number and the form type the receipt notice relates to. |
E-Verify now publishes its own reference lists of TPS-designated and DED-covered countries, each tied to the current Federal Register notice. Vendors have to pick from those lists, so the person completing Section 2 needs to know which extension the employee is actually relying on, and "the card's expired but they said it's fine" won't fit in the form.
It also means that once a TPS designation ends, E-Verify will already have a structured record of which cases relied on that country's automatic extension. Keep your reverification dates tied to the same notice. Our TPS employer guide and EAD guide cover how those extensions work on Form I-9.
Every case created under v32 carries a required field with the official name of the software provider that generated it. The ICA says this lets E-Verify "track and audit the source of case submissions for operational and support purposes," which gives the agency a way to look at case quality, like late submissions and duplicate cases, vendor by vendor. Your choice of I-9 and E-Verify software has always shaped the quality of your records, and now E-Verify can see that directly.
| Change | What it means |
|---|---|
| Email and phone moved to the Confirm Case Details step | The case must say whether the employee entered an email and phone number in Section 1, and include them if so. It should match what is on Form I-9. |
| No closing a case at Confirm Case Details | E-Verify now returns an error if a case is closed at that step. |
| Duplicate-case rules tightened | When a duplicate reason is needed, it is required, and "Other" requires an explanation. |
| Late-case reason reworded | "Audit Revealed that New Hire Was Not Run" now reads "An audit revealed that a case was not created for a new hire." |
| Case updates filtered by client | Employer agents can pull case updates for one client company at a time. |
Most employers will never read the ICA, but they'll feel it when their vendor cuts over, or doesn't. Employers whose E-Verify cases go out through an HCM like Workday, ADP, or UKG should find out who actually submits them, the HCM itself or a partner behind it, since that's the company that has to pass v32 testing. We covered why that distinction matters in our HRIS integration gap article.
No, the form, the Lists of Acceptable Documents, and the three-business-day deadline for Section 2 all stay the same. Version 32 only changes what software vendors send to E-Verify when they create a case.
The ICA covers the web services connection that vendors and employer agents use, so employers who enter cases directly on the E-Verify website aren't moving to a new API. Keeping your hiring-site list accurate is good practice either way.
E-Verify says the v31 APIs will be deprecated after that date, so a vendor still on v31 would need to finish v32 testing before it could keep submitting cases. Ask for a cutover date in writing now rather than in March.
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Email: support@i-9intelligence.com
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