Electronic KYC with Government ID
A step-by-step guide to verifying a customer’s identity electronically using their personal information and a government-issued ID.
What is an Electronic KYC (eKYC) Check?
An electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) check is the standard process for verifying a customer’s identity against digital data sources. This guide focuses on a common and robust method: verifying a customer’s personal information (name, DOB, address) along with a government-issued identity document.
This process is fundamental to meeting your compliance obligations under regulations like Australia’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) Act, which requires matching customer data against reliable and independent sources.
How It Works
The process involves two main API interactions:
Implementation Guide
This guide will walk you through the API calls required to perform a standard eKYC verification.
Step 1: Create an Individual with a Government ID
To begin, create an entity by calling the POST /v2/individuals
endpoint. The request below shows how to create an individual with a name, date of birth, address, an Australian Passport, and the necessary consents.
A successful 201 Created
response will contain the full entity profile, including the unique entityId
. You must store this entityId
as it is required for all subsequent API calls for this individual.
Step 2: Execute the KYC Workflow
Now, use the entityId
from the previous step to execute your verification workflow. The workflowName
in this example is AUS-Basic1V-IDOnly
.
A successful execution returns a workflowResult
object containing the complete outcome of the verification.
Interpreting the KYC Result
The workflowResult
object contains rich information about the verification.
The High-Level Verdict
For automated decision-making, start with these top-level fields:
status
: This is the definitive recommendation. The most common values arePASS
,FAIL
, orREVIEW
.workflowExecutionState
: This must beCOMPLETED
. If it’s anything else (e.g.,ERROR
,TIMEOUT
), the workflow did not finish, and thestatus
should not be trusted as final.
The KYC Step Details
To understand why the workflow passed or failed, find the KYC
object within the workflowStepResults
array.
result
: The outcome of the KYC step itself, typicallyMATCH
orNO_MATCH
.summary
: A summary object explaining how the result was reached. ThematchedRules
array shows which data sources were successfully matched (matchDetails
) and if the overall verification criteria were met (isVerified: true
).
Best Practices for Integration
- Trust the
status
field as the final, authoritative outcome for your business logic. - Always check
workflowExecutionState
to ensure the workflowCOMPLETED
successfully before actioning the result. - Log the
workflowExecutionId
with every result. This is the key identifier for support, auditing, and debugging. - Build logic to handle the
REVIEW
status. When you receive aREVIEW
, your system should flag the case for manual investigation by a compliance officer. Theissues
array in the workflow result will tell them where to look.
Next Steps
This guide provides a high-level overview of the eKYC result. For a complete reference of every field in the response, see the Interpreting Workflow Results guide.