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This guide provides a technical walkthrough on programmatically verifying a customer account using the Busha API.
What You’ll Achieve:
  1. Update customer profile with KYC/KYB documents.
  2. Successfully verify your customer identity.

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:
  • A Busha Business Account and Secret API Key (from the Quick Start Tutorial).
  • An understanding of API Environments (Sandbox vs. Production) and their base URLs (from the Make Your First Request Guide).
  • A business customer account with KYC/KYB documents submitted.

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Verifying Customer Identity (KYC/KYB)

1

Submit Customer KYC/KYB Documents

Skip this step if verification documents were attached when creating the customer.
The core requirement for verifying a customer is the completed upload of identification documents.
Files uploaded for KYC must be in Base64 format and have a file size less than 4MB.
Individual customerFor individual customers, the KYC documents required, depending on your country, are:
CountryDocuments Required
Nigeria
  • NIN slip and selfie video
  • National passport and selfie video
  • Driver’s license and selfie video
Kenya
  • National ID and selfie video
To update an individual customer with their verification documents:
  1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
  2. Use the PUT request below to the /v1/customers/{customer_id} endpoint.
  3. Replace {customer_id} with the customer ID.
  4. Replace YOUR_BASE_URL with your chosen environment’s URL and {YOUR_SECRET_KEY} with your actual key.
  5. Replace the values in the identifying_information and documents array with the customer documents.
$ curl -i -X PUT https://YOUR_BASE_URL/v1/customers/{customer_id} \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_SECRET_KEY}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "identifying_information": [
    {
      "type": "passport",
      "number": "AB12345",
      "country": "NG",
      "expiry_date": "2030-01-01",
      "image_front": "{{base64 string}}",
      "image_back": "{{base64 string}}"
    }
  ],
  "documents": [
    {
      "purposes": [
        "selfie_video"
      ],
      "file": "{{base64 string}}"
    }
  ]
}'
Business customerFor business customers, the KYB documents required are:
  • Certificate of Incorporation
  • Corporate registry extract
  • Memorandum of Association articles (memart)
  • Corporate structure chart
  • Board resolution
  • Anti-money laundering policy
  • Regulatory licenses
  • Proof of wealth
  • Proof of address
To update a business customer with their verification documents:
  1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
  2. Use the PUT request below to the /v1/customers/{customer_id} endpoint.
  3. Replace {customer_id} with the customer ID.
  4. Replace YOUR_BASE_URL with your chosen environment’s URL and {YOUR_SECRET_KEY} with your actual key.
  5. Replace the values in the documents array with the customer documents.
$ curl -i -X PUT https://YOUR_BASE_URL/v1/customers/{customer_id} \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_SECRET_KEY}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "documents": [
    {
      "purposes": [
        "certificate_of_incorporation"
      ],
      "file": "{{base64 string}}"
    }
  ]
}'
2

Verify the Customer

To verify the identity and the information provided by the customer:
  1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
  2. Use the POST request below to the /v1/customers/{customer_id}/verify endpoint.
  3. Replace {customer_id} with the customer ID.
  4. Replace YOUR_BASE_URL with your chosen environment’s URL and {YOUR_SECRET_KEY} with your actual key.
$ curl -i -X POST "https://YOUR_BASE_URL/v1/customers/{customer_id}/verify" \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {YOUR_SECRET_KEY}'
Expected ResponseA successful response will be returned if the information provided by the customer is valid.
{ "status": "success", "message": "Customer verified successfully" }
An error message will be returned if the information provided by the customer is invalid. For example, the missing_section error is returned for a business customer with incomplete sections: 
{
  "error": {
    "name": "missing_section",
    "message": "Owners section must be completed before final submission"
  }
}

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Troubleshooting

  • 400 Bad Request / 422 Unprocessable Entity: Review your request body to ensure all required fields are present and correctly formatted for the specified type (individual or business).
  • 401 Unauthorized: Verify that your Secret API Key is correct and included in the header.

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What’s Next?

Now that you can programmatically verify customers, you can proceed to perform transactions on their behalf: