KYC and identity verification in Kenya: verified APIs

Building any regulated product in Kenya requires knowing who your customer is. Digital lenders, neobanks, and insurance platforms all face this requirement before onboarding. Kenya's identity infrastructure is well-developed: national ID cards, KRA PIN numbers for taxpayer identification, and centralised business registration records. Several APIs and developer tools now expose these as programmable checks. Wycord's verified registry lists 5 KYC and identity resources for Kenya.

What you typically need to verify

Before choosing a tool, map what your product actually needs to confirm:

• Individual identity: national ID number, biometric face match, liveness check
• Business identity (KYB): company registration status, beneficial ownership
• Physical address: where a customer actually lives, required by many lenders and insurers
• Phone number: carrier, format validity, number type
• Tax registration: KRA PIN for B2B contracts, supplier onboarding, and payroll flows

No single tool covers all five pillars, but the verified options in Kenya get close when combined.

Peleza

Peleza is a Nairobi-based verification platform offering KYC, KYB, AML, and background-check services through REST APIs, embeddable SDKs, and drop-in widgets. It connects to official registries and watchlists, covering the full compliance stack for regulated Kenyan products.

What it verifies:

• Government-issued ID with document analysis
• Biometric verification: facial match and liveness detection
• Selfie photo ID and re-authentication (EasyAuth)
• Physical address, both digital and field-based
• Kenya business verification (KYB)
• Credit Reference Bureau checks
• AML screening and fraud scoring

Integration options: REST API, official SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, Android, and Flutter, plus drop-in widgets for KYC and document capture flows. A sandbox environment is available for testing before going live.

Access is approval-based. Pricing is not published publicly: contact Peleza directly through docs.peleza.com.

Wycord listing: wycord.com/resource/peleza

OkHi

OkHi is designed for products that need to verify where a customer physically lives. You embed the OkHi SDK into your mobile app. A customer opens the flow, confirms their GPS location, photographs their door, and provides turn-by-turn navigation instructions. OkHi stores and verifies that address, returning a structured record you can reference across future sessions.

Use cases: verified address capture for lending KYC, ecommerce delivery, and account opening fraud prevention.

Platforms: Android, iOS, Flutter, React Native, and a JavaScript snippet for web. A WooCommerce plugin is available for merchants.

Coverage: built in Kenya, also operating in Nigeria.

Access is approval-based via docs.okhi.com.

Wycord listing: wycord.com/resource/okhi

Jenga API

Jenga is an open banking and financial services platform operated by Finserve Africa. Beyond bank transfers, mobile money, airtime, and forex, it exposes a KYC endpoint to verify customer identities. Its key differentiator is regional reach: a single integration covers Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, DRC, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

If your product serves users across East or Central Africa rather than Kenya alone, Jenga reduces the number of separate KYC integrations you need to maintain. Both live and sandbox (UAT) environments are available.

Documentation and sandbox access: developer.jengahq.io. Approval-based.

Wycord listing: wycord.com/resource/jenga-api

Developer tools: phone and tax validation

These two open-source tools are not full KYC solutions. They handle narrow, specific validation tasks that fit into a larger onboarding pipeline.

kenyan-mobile-number-validator

A Node.js package that validates Kenyan mobile numbers and identifies the carrier: Safaricom, Airtel, or Telkom. It handles both national formats (07XX or 7XX prefixes) and E.164 (+254XX) via regex pattern matching.

Use it at form-validation time to catch invalid numbers and route carrier-specific logic before a request hits your backend. Avoid calling paid SMS or OTP APIs against a malformed number.

Install: npm install kenyan-mobile-number-validator. Free and open-source.

Wycord listing: wycord.com/resource/kenyan-mobile-number-validator

KRA-GAVA-Connect

A Python package that wraps KRA API access for two checks: KRA PIN validation and ID-based PIN lookup. Useful in B2B onboarding when you need to confirm a supplier or partner holds a valid tax registration before transacting with them.

The package is a community project, not officially affiliated with the Kenya Revenue Authority. You supply your own API credentials and can point at either sandbox or production. Free and open-source.

Wycord listing: wycord.com/resource/kra-gava-connect

What to use when

Requirement	Best fit
Full individual KYC (ID document, biometrics, AML)	Peleza
Kenya business verification (KYB)	Peleza
Physical address capture and verification	OkHi
KYC across Kenya and other East African countries	Jenga API
Phone number format and carrier validation	kenyan-mobile-number-validator
B2B KRA PIN validation	KRA-GAVA-Connect

For most regulated fintechs in Kenya, Peleza handles the core KYC and KYB pipeline. Add OkHi if your product needs verified physical addresses for lending or delivery. Jenga API is the right choice when your user base spans multiple East African countries. The two open-source tools are narrow additions to any stack, not standalone compliance solutions.

A note on approval-based access

Peleza, OkHi, and Jenga API all require approval before granting production access. Plan for a review period when scheduling your onboarding timeline. Each offers a sandbox environment, so integration and testing can proceed while your application is being reviewed.

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Browse all 5 verified Kenya KYC and identity resources, along with the full catalog of APIs, tools, datasets, and MCP servers for Kenya, at wycord.com/best/apis-in-kenya.