Error while registering in Laravel

I'm getting the following error while registering in Laravel:

Type error: Argument 1 passed to Illuminate\Auth\SessionGuard::login() must be an instance of Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\Authenticatable, instance of App\users given, called in /home/procui74/procurementz/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Auth/RegistersUsers.php on line 35

Below is the create() function from my RegisterController.php file:

protected function create(array $data)
{
$userTypeId = user_types::where('userTypeTitle', $data['regTypeRadio'])
                ->pluck('userTypeId')
                ->first();

$user = users::create([
    'name' => $data['name'],
    'email' => $data['email'],
    'password' => bcrypt($data['password']),
    'isActive' => '0',
    'isAdmin' => '0',
    'userTypeId' => $userTypeId,
    'contactPersonName' => $data['personName'],
    'contactNumber' => $data['contactNumber'],
]);

$verifyUser = VerifyUser::create([
    'users_id' => $user->id,
    'token' => md5(uniqid(mt_rand(), true))
]);

Mail::to($user->email)->send(new VerifyMail($user));
return $user;

$notification = array(
    'message' => 'Registration successful! Your account would be activated post verification.', 
    'alert-type' => 'info',
);

return redirect('/')->with($notification);
}

I understand that the error is due to this line: return $user; but what to do not. I need the $user->id to save the user's id in the verifyUsers table.

This code works absolutely fine on my local machine (PHP 7.0.2.4) but doest work on web server (PHP 7.1).

via Chebli Mohamed