Where Is My Organization's Data Stored, Europe or the United States?

POK stores your organization's data in one of two regions, Europe or the United States, whichever you choose when you create your account. That choice decides the URL you and your team sign in at, the URL your recipients see, and the CNAME target if you set up a custom domain for your credentials.

When do you choose your region?

You choose it once, when you create your account. On the sign-up screen, under "Your data will be stored in:", pick "EU data center" (Europe) or "US data center" (United States) before you continue. There is no separate region step when you sign in afterward: the sign-in screen only asks for your email, and POK sends you to the region your account already belongs to.

What changes between Europe and the United States?

• Your certifier URL. Europe accounts use mint.pok.tech; United States accounts use mint.us.pok.tech. This is the address you and your team use every day to sign in to the certifier dashboard.
• Your custom credential domain's CNAME target. If you set up a custom domain for your credentials, point your CNAME at custom-domain.pok.tech for Europe or custom-domain.us.pok.tech for the United States. Point it at the wrong one and the domain never resolves, even though the record looks correct in your DNS settings.
• Every other POK address tied to your organization. The pattern is not specific to the certifier: every public POK URL is built by adding us. after the service name for United States accounts. The wallet where your recipients keep their credentials, for example, is holder.pok.tech in Europe and holder.us.pok.tech in the United States, and the page a recipient opens to verify a credential that is not on a custom domain follows the same rule.

Why choose Europe or the United States?

Choose based on where your organization needs its data to live, not on speed, since both regions run the same product. This is a data-residency question. If your institution operates under European data protection law, such as GDPR, or an internal policy that keeps student and staff records inside the European Union, choose Europe. If your institution operates under United States law or a policy that keeps data inside the country, choose the United States instead. POK does not decide this for you, and picking a region is not a compliance certification by itself: it only fixes where your organization's data is hosted, so check your own institution's obligations before you choose.

How do I know which region my account is in?

• The address bar. Once you are signed in, the certifier's URL tells you: mint.pok.tech is Europe, mint.us.pok.tech is the United States.
• Organization Settings. In the top bar, click your organization's name, then click "Organization Settings." Near the top of the page you will see "Your data is stored in the EU data center" or "Your data is stored in the US data center."

Can I change my organization's region later?

Not by yourself. POK does not offer a way to move an existing organization's data from one region to the other from within the product. If your institution's needs changed after you signed up, write to contact@pok.tech and describe what you need. This is a manual, case-by-case request, not a self-service setting.

I signed in and my account looks empty

Work through these in order:

1. You are signed in to the wrong region. Each region is a separate copy of POK with its own accounts, so an organization created in Europe does not exist in the United States region, or the other way around. Signing in at the wrong regional URL either fails to recognize your login at all, or, if it lets you through, treats you as a brand-new user and offers to set up a new organization instead of opening the one you already have. If that happens, stop before finishing that setup and check the address bar against how to tell which region your account is in above.
2. A bookmark or saved link points at the wrong one. The sign-in link in your invitation email or on pok.tech looks up your email and sends you to the right regional URL automatically. A bookmark aimed directly at one certifier skips that lookup, so update it to match your account's region.

If instead you see an INVALID_SESSION error while claiming a credential from inside a course in your LMS, that is a different, unrelated issue. See How to fix the INVALID_SESSION error.

My custom credential domain does not work

The most common cause is a CNAME pointed at the target for the wrong region. Confirm which region your organization is in, then check that your CNAME record points at custom-domain.pok.tech for Europe or custom-domain.us.pok.tech for the United States, as described in Set up the domain for your credentials. Do not confuse this with DNS verification, which is a separate TXT record used to verify your organization's own domain, not the CNAME for your credential pages.