Embodiments of present invention are directed to document authentication based on video captures. Instructions may be generated to guide a remotely situated customer through an authentication process in which the customer presents a document (e.g., a driver license, passport, or payment card) to a video capture element of a personal computing device (e.g., a smart phone or tablet computer) in a specified manner so that identifiable feature(s) of that document can be captured in a video file. The video file may then be uploaded to a central server for further processing or archiving. The instructions that guide the customer through the document authentication steps may be either generated locally on the personal computing device via a mobile application or delivered from a remote computer via an Internet browser. With this technique, a banking customer need not physically visit a bank to authenticate certain documents.