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

Identity verification
built for Kenya Flag of Kenya

National ID Card and Passport on one session, cross-checked against the National Registration Bureau, $0.33 full KYC, 500 free every month.

Backed by
Y CombinatorRobinhood Ventures
GBTC Finance
Bondex
Crnogorski Telekom
UCSF Neuroscape
Shiply
Adelantos

Trusted by 2,000+ organizations worldwide.

Country brief

How identity verification works in Kenya.

The fraud surface and the frameworks an engineering or compliance lead needs before scoping an integration.
Fraud landscape
Three pressures shape Kenyan identity fraud: deepfake and synthetic-ID attacks targeting M-Pesa-connected fintechs and the wave of crypto on/off-ramps, National ID Card forgery across the legacy and Huduma transitional formats, and AML pressure on cross-border remittance corridors. Didit scores 200+ real-time fraud signals on every session, face morph, replay, injection, document tampering, device intelligence, IP geolocation.
Compliance frameworks
  • POCAMLA (Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2009)
  • Data Protection Act 2019
  • CBK Prudential Guideline on AML/CFT
  • National Payment System Act 2011
  • FATF 40 recommendations
Regulators

Who supervises identity verification in Kenya.

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

    Central Bank of Kenya, prudential supervisor for banks, microfinance institutions, payment service providers, and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) under the 2025 VASP Bill.

  • CMA

    Capital Markets Authority, securities and capital-markets supervisor. Sets remote-onboarding requirements for licensed brokers and fund managers.

  • FRC

    Financial Reporting Centre, Kenya's Financial Intelligence Unit. Receives Suspicious Transaction Reports under POCAMLA (Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2009).

  • ODPC

    Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, enforces the Data Protection Act 2019. Governs every identity verification on Kenyan residents.

  • IPRS

    Integrated Population Registration System, operated by the National Registration Bureau. Maintains the authoritative civil registry used by every Kenyan KYC flow.

Verification flow · One API

Four modules. One verification.

ID, biometric, AML, and a Kenya 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.

  • National ID Card, Passport (with the chip read on e-Passports), driving licence, and Alien ID Card for foreign residents.
  • Returns the name, ID number, date of birth, place of issue, and expiry.
Read the docs
Stage 01Capture and read the ID
  • National ID Card
  • Passport, chip read on e-Passport
  • Driving Licence · Alien ID Card
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 Kenyan watchlists:

  • National Assembly of Kenya, Members of Parliament and senior legislative-branch officials (PEP Level 1).
  • Kenya Tourism Board, state-parastatal officials and board members.
  • Kenya Rural Roads Authority, state-agency officials and senior management.
  • Nairobi Securities Exchange, listed-company enforcement actions and exchange disciplinary decisions.
  • County Government of Kisii, county executive and assembly officials (PEP Level 3-4).
  • Bomet County Government, county executive and assembly officials (PEP Level 3-4).
  • ADB, Asian Development Bank (Nairobi), multilateral development bank debarment and sanctions list.
  • Kenyan Wall Street, adverse-media signals from Kenya's leading financial journalism outlet.

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

Cross-check against the National Registration Bureau.

Cross-checked against the authoritative civil registry.

  • The `ken_national_id` service is the canonical POCAMLA authoritative-source check. ~90% adult-population coverage.
  • Pay-per-success: $3.15 per conclusive result. No charge when the registry is unreachable or required fields are missing.
  • No user consent required, Didit handles the National Registration Bureau contract directly.
Read the docs
Stage 04Cross-check against the National Registration Bureau

Cross-check against the National Registration Bureau , see the docs for the full module surface.

Documents covered

Every Kenya document Didit accepts.

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

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 Kenyan regulator covers identity verification on a digital onboarding?

Four sit on top of every Kenyan identity-verification flow:

  • Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), prudential supervisor for banks, microfinance institutions, payment service providers and the 2025 Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) regime.
  • Capital Markets Authority (CMA), securities and capital-markets supervisor.
  • Financial Reporting Centre (FRC), Kenya's Financial Intelligence Unit. Administers POCAMLA (Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2009) and receives Suspicious Transaction Reports.
  • Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC), enforces the Data Protection Act 2019. Governs how the verification data is captured, stored, and disclosed.

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

Does Didit cross-check Kenyan identities against the National Registration Bureau?

Yes, via the `ken_national_id` Database Validation service (POST /v3/database-validation/ with services=ken_national_id).

  • Source: National Registration Bureau (Ministry of Interior), Kenya's authoritative civil registry, accessed via the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS).
  • Coverage: ~90% of the adult population.
  • Price: $3.15 per successful query.
  • Required inputs: first_name, last_name, date_of_birth, national_id (8-9 digits). No user consent required.
  • Returns: identification_number, full_name, date_of_birth, name_match_score, plus the per-field verifications array.

The service is documented at docs.didit.me/api-reference/database-validation/kenya/national-id. Pay-per-success, no contracts.

Does Didit handle the Huduma Namba / Maisha Namba transition?

Yes, both formats route through the same hosted flow.

  • The legacy National ID Card is auto-classified, captured, and OCR-parsed today.
  • The Huduma Namba / Maisha Namba unified credential is recognised on the same flow as it rolls out across the population.
  • Both formats cross-check through ken_national_id against the National Registration Bureau, the authoritative-source verification POCAMLA expects regardless of which document the user presents.
How long does it take to integrate Didit in Kenya?

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 + National Registration Bureau cross-check, 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 Kenya stack at zero cost before flipping production traffic.

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

English, auto-detected from the user's browser / device locale. The hosted UI ships in 48+ languages; Kenyan users land on the English flow by default, and Swahili is live on the same flow for cross-locale teams.

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 Kenya 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.
  • `ken_national_id` (National Registration Bureau), $3.15 per successful query.

The full KYC bundle (Identity + Passive Liveness + Face Match + IP Analysis) is `$0.33`, same anchor price worldwide, no Kenya 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.

Ask an AI to summarise this page