What You Need to Know About Fingerprinting Services

Sometimes fingerprints are required for employment, medical licenses, insurance licenses, out of State CCW permits (Utah, Arizona), nursing jobs and licenses, SEC, ABA, FINRA, Government employees, Security firms, Peace Corps, IRS E-File providers, Child identification kits, South African, Canadian, Australian immigration purposes, volunteer work, and almost any other reason that would require to have fingerprints completed.

The fingerprinting process can be a daunting process as every business, agency or State has their own guidelines and procedures for background checks. You may have even been given the run around up until this point. It is my personal goal to help aide and steer you in the right direction for all of your fingerprinting requirements.

There are currently two methods of fingerprinting; ink fingerprinting and live scan (electronic) fingerprinting. Although ink fingerprinting is a traditional method of obtaining fingerprints, it may be required for your state or agency. Many reasons for ink fingerprints would be for an example, a nurse living in Pennsylvania applying for a Nursing license in Nevada. The nurse would not be able to go to the local livescan service and submit the prints electronically to Nevada. The two states do not have the capability of linking their systems together.

What You Need to Know About Fingerprinting Services

Another good example is people applying for a Utah non-resident carry permit and lives in New York. The person would have to be ink fingerprinted and then the card would be mailed to the Utah Bureau of Identification.

Livescan (electronic) fingerprinting is widely used for the employment agencies in the United States and abroad. Livescan is very efficient in the fingerprinting turnaround time and it is much more effective in certain cases. Typically livescan is the primary method used in your state for jobs such as nurses, doctors, school teachers, and much more.

The method of which you are required to be fingerprinted is dependent on your state or agencies requirements for having a background check run on you. It is best to research what type of fingerprint will be required or ask your human resource officer, since they will more than likely already know which fingerprint you will need.

What You Need to Know About Fingerprinting Services

Every state has their own fingerprinting process and as of right now the various states have contracted with different companies called “FBI Channelers”. Pennsylvania for example has obtained fingerprinting services through 3M Cogent for “FBI Channeler” purposes. The state in which you are applying for or moving to may have different companies that channel fingerprints to the FBI. As of right now most of them are not compatible with each other from state to state, meaning that you most likely are not be able to go to your local livescan business and have your fingerprints transmitted electronically to that states FBI channeler or State Identification Bureau.