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Didit Raises $7.5M to Build the Infrastructure for Identity and Fraud
Didit
Middle East & Africa

Identity verification
built for Ethiopia Flag of Ethiopia

Kebele ID, Fayda digital ID and Passport on one session, screened against Ethiopian regulatory watchlists, $0.33 full KYC, 500 free every month.

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Y CombinatorRobinhood Ventures
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Bondex
Crnogorski Telekom
UCSF Neuroscape
Shiply
Adelantos

Trusted by 2,000+ organizations worldwide.

Country brief

How identity verification works in Ethiopia.

The fraud surface and the frameworks an engineering or compliance lead needs before scoping an integration.
Fraud landscape
Three pressures shape Ethiopian identity fraud: deepfake and synthetic-ID attacks on the growing mobile-money and remittance corridors, Kebele ID forgery during the Fayda transition, and AML pressure tied to cross-border trade across the Horn of Africa. Didit scores 200+ real-time fraud signals on every session, face morph, replay, injection, document tampering, device intelligence, IP geolocation.
Compliance frameworks
  • AML/CFT Proclamation 657/2009 (as amended)
  • NBE remote-onboarding and CDD directives
  • Personal Data Protection Proclamation (in finalisation)
  • Counter-Financing of Terrorism Proclamation
  • FATF 40 recommendations
Regulators

Who supervises identity verification in Ethiopia.

These are the supervisors a Ethiopia verification flow has to answer to. One Didit hosted flow + one audit log covers every one of them, no separate integration per agency.
  • NBE

    National Bank of Ethiopia, central bank and prudential supervisor for banks, payment service providers, microfinance institutions, and money-transfer operators.

  • ECMA

    Ethiopian Capital Markets Authority, operational since 2024. Capital-markets supervisor for licensed brokers, fund managers, and the planned Ethiopian Securities Exchange.

  • FIS

    Financial Intelligence Service, Ethiopia's Financial Intelligence Unit (formerly the FIC). Receives Suspicious Transaction Reports under the AML/CFT Proclamation 657/2009 (as amended).

  • NIDP

    National ID Program, administers the Fayda digital identity rollout built on the MOSIP open-source foundation.

  • ERCA

    Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority, administers tax enforcement and customs oversight. Maintains enforcement watchlists used in financial crime and AML screening for Ethiopian nationals and entities.

Verification flow · One API

Four modules. One verification.

ID, biometric, AML, and a Ethiopia database cross-check, composed on one workflow, billed per success, returned in one report.
01 · ID

Capture and read the ID.

Captured on any phone, auto-classified, OCR-parsed, and template-verified.

  • Fayda Digital ID (as enrolment expands), the legacy Kebele ID across regional templates, Passport (with the chip read on e-Passports), and the Ministry of Transport driver's licence.
  • Returns the name, ID number, date of birth, place of issue, and expiry.
Read the docs
Stage 01Capture and read the ID
  • Fayda Digital ID · Kebele ID
  • Passport, chip read on e-Passport
  • Driver's Licence
02 · Biometric

Match the face. Prove it's a real person..

Selfie confirmed live and matched against the ID portrait.

  • Duplicate check: 1:N face search across existing users. Free.
  • Active liveness ($0.15) for elevated-risk flows, user turns or blinks.
Read the docs
Stage 02Match the face. Prove it's a real person.
  • Selfie on any phone or laptop camera
  • Mobile-handoff QR when the user starts on desktop
03 · AML

Screen for sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media.

1,300+ global sanctions, PEP, and adverse-media lists, plus Ethiopian watchlists:

  • House of Federation (Ethiopia), PEP Level 3 upper-house federal officials.
  • Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA), PEP Level 3 revenue officials and enforcement designations.
  • Addis Ababa City Administration, PEP Level 4 municipal officials.
  • Ethiopian Federal Police, Warnings and law enforcement designations.
  • Office of the Attorney General, enforcement and prosecution watchlist.
  • National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), regulatory enforcement register.
  • Ethiopian Capital Markets Authority (ECMA), enforcement and disciplinary register.
  • ESAAMLG-aligned PEP lists, Eastern and Southern Africa AML Group regional watchlist.
  • African Union Commission, continental sanctions and enforcement designations.
  • Interpol Ethiopia, international law enforcement cooperation register.

Severity-scored. Ongoing monitoring ($0.07/user/yr) re-checks daily and fires a webhook on new hits.

Read the docs
Stage 03Screen for sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media

Screen for sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media , see the docs for the full module surface.

04 · Registry

Bind every check to one audited session.

  • There is no public government database validation API for Ethiopia currently exposed as a standalone Didit service, the Fayda / NIDP registry does not currently offer a public consumer API open to third-party integrators.
Read the docs
Stage 04Bind every check to one audited session

Bind every check to one audited session , see the docs for the full module surface.

Documents covered

Every Ethiopia document Didit accepts.

One row per accepted credential, flag, document name, document type. Live from the Didit Business Console.
Authoritative datasets

Civil-registry and AML coverage for Ethiopia.

One card per dataset Didit cross-checks against, civil registries on the Database Validation API plus the global AML watchlist pool. Each card links to the technical docs.
Compliant by design

Open a new country in one click. We do the hard work.

We open the local subsidiaries, secure the licenses, run the penetration tests, earn the certifications, and align with every new regulation. To ship verifications in a new country, flip a toggle. 220+ countries live, audited and pen-tested every quarter, the only identity provider an EU member-state government has formally called safer than in-person verification.
Read the security & compliance dossier
EU financial sandbox
Tesoro · SEPBLAC · BdE
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security · 2026
SOC 2 · Type I
AICPA · 2026
iBeta Level 1 PAD
NIST / NIAP · 2026
GDPR
EU 2016/679
DORA
EU 2022/2554
MiCA
EU 2023/1114
AMLD6 · eIDAS 2.0
EU-aligned by design
FAQ

Common questions about Ethiopia.

What does Didit ship?

Didit is the infrastructure layer for identity and fraud. One Application Programming Interface (API), 25+ composable modules across four product lines:

  • User Verification (KYC, know your customer), Identity Document Verification, liveness, face match, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) screening, Internet Protocol (IP) analysis. $0.33 per full bundle.
  • Business Verification (KYB, know your business), registry, Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO), officers, entity AML, plus a linked KYC session per UBO.
  • Transaction Monitoring, real-time rule engine, case management, Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) workflow.
  • Wallet Screening (KYT, know your transaction), on-chain wallet risk at $0.15 per check, or bring your own screening provider and run it inside Didit.

Compose any module into a workflow with the visual no-code builder, ship in 5 minutes, 500 verifications free every month, forever.

How is Didit different from a single-product Know Your Customer (KYC) vendor?

Most identity vendors sell one slice, a KYC check, an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) list, a wallet screen. Didit ships the infrastructure underneath all of them, and the gap shows up on six axes:

  • Pricing. Public price on every module, $0.33 for a full KYC, 500 verifications free every month, no minimums, no contracts. Single-product vendors hide six-figure minimums behind a sales call.
  • Access. Sandbox in one click, self-serve from day one, production keys on signup. Single-product vendors gate the sandbox behind a contract, months to evaluate.
  • Developer experience. Public docs, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Claude Code and Cursor, and native Software Development Kits (SDKs) for Web, iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter. Integrate in 5 minutes with an AI agent or in a working afternoon by hand.
  • User experience. Highest pass rates in the market, sub-2-second end-to-end inference, country-specialised capture flows, 48+ languages out of the box.
  • Flexibility. One /v3/ Application Programming Interface (API) composes 25+ modules across KYC, Know Your Business (KYB), Transaction Monitoring, and Wallet Screening (KYT, know your transaction). A KYB session spawns a linked KYC for every Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO); a flagged transaction spawns a step-up KYC remediation, same session, same webhook contract, same audit trail. Single-product vendors sell one shape of KYC and stop there.
  • AI-era fraud. 200+ real-time fraud signals scored on every session, deepfake, injection, synthetic-ID, document forgery, face-morph, device intelligence, replay. Single-product vendors treat deepfake and injection detection as roadmap items, not defaults.

Common in fintech and crypto, the same architecture fits marketplaces, iGaming, mobility, and any vertical where you need to know who someone is and what they are doing.

What does it cost? Is anything actually free?

500 verifications free every month, forever, on every account. No credit card. No sales call. No expiry.

Above the free tier, every module has a public per-success price on didit.me/pricing, $0.33 per full KYC bundle, $0.15 per Identity Document Verification, $0.15 per Wallet Screening, $0.20 per Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Screening, $0.10 per liveness, $0.05 per face match, $0.03 per Internet Protocol (IP) analysis.

Pay-as-you-go, no minimums, no overage surprises. Volume discounts kick in automatically as you grow.

Which Ethiopian regulator covers identity verification on a digital onboarding?

Three sit on top of every Ethiopian identity-verification flow:

  • National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), sets remote-onboarding requirements for banks, payment service providers, microfinance institutions, and money-transfer operators.
  • Ethiopian Capital Markets Authority (ECMA), operational since 2024. Capital-markets supervisor for licensed brokers, fund managers, and the planned Ethiopian Securities Exchange.
  • Financial Intelligence Service (FIS), Ethiopia's Financial Intelligence Unit. Administers the AML/CFT Proclamation 657/2009 and receives Suspicious Transaction Reports.

A Personal Data Protection Proclamation is being finalised; the data-handling and consent posture on every Didit Ethiopia flow already follows the GDPR-grade SOC 2 Type 1 + ISO/IEC 27001 baseline that satisfies the draft text.

Didit ships the hosted flow + the audit log + the watchlist coverage to satisfy all three at the same time, same POST /v3/session/ workflow, same JSON report, same SOC 2 Type 1 + ISO/IEC 27001 evidence pack.

How does Didit handle the Kebele ID to Fayda digital ID transition?

Both formats route through the same hosted flow.

  • The legacy Kebele ID is auto-classified, captured, and OCR-parsed across regional templates today.
  • The Fayda digital ID, built on MOSIP and rolling out nationwide under the National ID Program, is recognised on the same flow as enrolment expands.
  • Both formats flow into the same AML, biometric, and workflow-builder pipeline, so customers can onboard Kebele-only users today and let Fayda holders flow through the same session as adoption ramps.
Which Ethiopian watchlists does the AML stage screen against?

Every named Ethiopian regulatory body + adverse-media signal, on top of the global pool of 1,300+ sanctions, Politically Exposed Persons (PEP), and adverse-media sources:

  • House of Federation (Ethiopia) (PEP Level 3).
  • Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA) (PEP Level 3).
  • Addis Ababa City Administration (PEP Level 4).
  • Ethiopian Federal Police, Warnings.

The full list is documented at docs.didit.me/core-technology/aml-screening/watchlist-database-aml-screening. Turn on ongoing monitoring ($0.07 per user / year) for the periodic-review obligation FIS expects.

How long does it take to integrate Didit in Ethiopia?

5 minutes to a working sandbox, a weekend to a production flow.

  • Sign up at business.didit.me, grab an API key, call POST /v3/session/ with a workflow_id that wires ID Verification + Active Liveness + Face Match + AML, done.
  • AI-agent path: paste the integration prompt at docs.didit.me/integration/integration-prompt into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Devin, Aider, or Replit Agent. The agent provisions the application, builds the workflow, wires the webhook, and runs a smoke test.
  • Five SDKs share the same session model: Web, iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter.

The first 500 verifications every month are free, forever, pilot the full Ethiopia stack at zero cost before flipping production traffic.

Which language does the hosted verification flow use for Ethiopian users?

Amharic and English, auto-detected from the user's browser / device locale. The hosted UI ships in 48+ languages; Ethiopian users land on the Amharic flow when their device locale signals it, and on English otherwise.

The document-recognition layer is decoupled from the UI layer, capture works in any language, and the admin console can be set independently to whichever language your compliance team prefers.

What does the Ethiopia verification cost end-to-end?

Per-module public pricing, pay only for what runs on the session:

  • ID Verification, $0.15 per document check.
  • Passive Liveness, $0.10. Active Liveness, $0.15.
  • Face Match 1:1, $0.05. Face Search 1:N, free.
  • AML Screening, $0.20 per check. Ongoing AML, $0.07 per user / year.

The full KYC bundle (Identity + Passive Liveness + Face Match + IP Analysis) is `$0.33`, same anchor price worldwide, no Ethiopia surcharge. 500 verifications free every month, no credit card. Volume discounts auto-apply above the free tier; Enterprise adds a custom Master Services Agreement (MSA) and data-residency choice.

Infrastructure for identity and fraud.

One API for KYC, KYB, Transaction Monitoring, and Wallet Screening. Integrate in 5 minutes.

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