What is pasby?
Electronic identification and trust infrastructure for African residents and the apps that serve them.
pasby™ is more than an electronic identification system — it is a single-sign-on platform for national and expatriate residents of African states. Your application can:
- Authenticate users and request verified identity claims with consent
- Confirm transactions and sign documents using real identities
- Orchestrate multi-step user journeys through flows
You integrate as a consumer (organisation) with one or more apps. Each app has an API key, secret, and provisioned scopes that control which endpoints you may call.
Why pasby?
Teams adopt pasby when they want digital interactions that stay smooth, simple, and recognisable:
- Login with one identifier instead of many passwords
- Share ID data safely with consent, without repetitive forms
- Onboard users without long registration flows
- Confirm transactions from the pasby app
- Sign documents with real identities instead of paper
How pasby is structured
Identities are pasby users (residents) identified by a national identification number (NIN). Each identity holds claims — structured ID data only released with consent.
Your app calls the API with an action (login, sign, …) governed by scopes. Apps belong to a consumer organisation you manage in the pasby console.
How integration usually works
- Your backend starts a flow (identification, signing, or document) with a
payloadyour user can understand. - The user completes the action in the pasby app or via a hosted identification link (OIDC).
- Your backend tracks completion with flow ping or SSE, and optionally receives webhooks for signature events.
Your app owns session storage (cookies, database, tokens). pasby returns flow state and approved claims—you decide how to map them to your user model.
Two integration styles
| Style | When to use |
|---|---|
| REST API v2 | Mobile apps, server-driven signing, document workflows, wildcard QR |
| OIDC API | Web apps that redirect users to pasby-hosted identification with PKCE |
Many teams use both: OIDC for browser login and the public API for signing or documents.
Next steps
- How to get API keys — Console setup with screenshots
- Quickstart — first successful API call
- Credentials — keys, secrets, environments
- Choose your integration path — decision tree