This is from over a year ago. Is it still the case?
I'm an American with a BofA credit card living in Taiwan right now. I would expect that to trigger a check for this. But I signed up yesterday and haven't had to verify anything.
Also, it's worth noting that the process of ID verification is not uncommon for hosting companies. FDCServers is a big hosting company that requires all new accounts to provide ID verification. Of course you're free to blur out sensitive details, and they let you send the images directly to them instead of uploading to imgur, but it's a practice nonetheless.
In businesses with high fraud rates (like hosting), it's a good idea to require customers who are creating an account from an IP address more than 100+ miles from their billing zip code to provide ID. It will reduce your chargeback rate.