KYC API — how to use it

On this page 1. Getting started 2. Sending someone a verification link 3. What the customer sees 4. Reading the result 5. Video KYC with a live agent 6. When a check fails 7. Settings worth getting right 8. Quotas and billing 9. Consent, records and the law

1. Getting started

Sign in at the dashboard and open Identity checks. A free account gets 10 identity checks and 2 video KYC calls a month, which is enough to see whether it fits before you pay anything.

Before your first real check, go to API keys & settings and set your business name. It appears on the customer's screen and on the PDF report — an unnamed request makes people abandon the process.

2. Sending someone a verification link

In Identity checks, start a new check. Enter the person's name and their mobile number or email, choose which ID you want, and send. They get a link that opens on their phone.

ID type	What it proves
Aadhaar	Identity and address. Most widely held.
PAN	Identity for anything financial or tax-related.
Driving licence	Identity, address and a photo.
Voter ID	Identity and address.
Passport	Identity, the strongest document for foreign nationals.

The link expires, so send it when the person is likely to act on it — not on Friday night.

3. What the customer sees

A page with your business name, saying what is being verified and why.
A consent screen. They must agree before anything is captured, and that agreement is recorded with the time and their IP.
Photograph the document — front and back where it applies.
A live selfie. The screen asks them to move, so a held-up photograph of someone else does not pass.
Done. If video KYC is switched on, they either join a call now or book a slot.

It works in a phone browser. Nothing to install.

4. Reading the result

Each completed check gives you:

The document details read from the ID — name, number, date of birth, address where the document carries one.
Whether the selfie matches the photo on the document, as a score, not a yes/no.
Whether the document looks tampered with — edited text, a photo pasted over, a printed copy held to the camera.
A PDF report with the images, the findings, the consent record and the timestamps. This is the one you keep.

A machine result is evidence, not a verdict. A low face-match score is often a beard, ten years, or bad light — not fraud. Anything marginal deserves a human look, which is what the review screen and video KYC are for.

5. Video KYC with a live agent

For cases where documents alone are not enough — high-value onboarding, regulated lending, or anything that must stand up to an audit — an agent speaks to the person on video and confirms they are real and present.

Who runs the call

Under Video KYC you choose: your own team takes the calls, the iChek team does (charged per call), or either, whoever is free. If you use your own team, each agent signs in to the agent console from the same screen.

On the call

The agent sees the customer live, captures stills, asks the questions you configured, checks liveness, and works through a checklist before deciding. The whole call is recorded, with the time burnt into the picture, and the recording is stored against the case.

Booked slots

Customers can join immediately during your working hours, or book a slot. Set your days, hours and how many agents are available under Video KYC — get this wrong and customers queue for an agent who isn't there.

A video decision can't be overturned from the dashboard. That is deliberate — it is what makes the record worth having. If a decision was wrong, run a second check; the audit trail then shows both, which is exactly what an auditor wants to see.

6. When a check fails

What happened	What to do
Face match is low	Look at the two photos yourself. Old document photos, beards and poor light cause most of it. Ask for a video call rather than rejecting.
Document unreadable	Ask them to retry in daylight, flat on a table, no flash, no glare on the lamination.
"Tampering suspected"	Do not approve on documents alone. Use video KYC, or ask for a second ID type.
Customer never opened the link	Resend it. If it's expired, start a new check — it does not count twice unless they complete it.
Stuck at the selfie step	Camera permission was refused. They should reopen the link and allow the camera.
Genuinely no ID on hand	Book a video call — the agent can see the document live rather than through the capture flow.

7. Settings worth getting right

Your business name and logo — completion rates depend on people recognising who is asking.
Which IDs you accept — asking for Aadhaar when PAN would do gathers more personal data than you need.
Your video KYC questions — write them so an impersonator can't answer from the document alone.
Who may approve — the person who ran the video call is not allowed to also sign off the audit. Keep it that way.

8. Quotas and billing

Plan	Identity checks a month	Video calls
Free	10	2
Starter	150	20
Growth	600	100

Live prices are on the pricing page. Plans are prepaid and don't auto-renew; renew early and unused days carry over. A check counts when the customer completes it, not when you send the link. Calls taken by the iChek team are charged per call and don't come out of your plan's allowance.

9. Consent, records and the law

You are collecting identity documents, so you carry duties under India's data protection law. Three things to hold on to:

Only ask for what the purpose needs. One ID type is usually enough.
Consent is recorded for you — wording, time and IP — and it's in the PDF. Don't work around it by collecting documents over WhatsApp instead.
Records don't live forever. Ordinary checks are purged on the schedule in our privacy policy; video KYC records are kept longer because the RBI's V-CIP rules require it.

If you are a regulated entity, your own compliance team should sign off on your question list and approval rules before you go live. We can walk them through the audit trail.

Something not covered? Contact iChek — tell us the session reference and what you expected to happen.