KYB API Guide — Business Verification
How to verify business entities, directors, and ownership structures programmatically — for fintechs, marketplaces, and enterprise platforms.
What Is KYB?
Know Your Business (KYB) is the process of verifying the identity, legitimacy, and ownership structure of a business entity before establishing a commercial relationship. While KYC focuses on individuals, KYB addresses the complexity of corporate structures — beneficial owners, directors, registered addresses, and regulatory filings.
KYB is mandatory for banks, NBFCs, payment aggregators, and any platform onboarding businesses as merchants, vendors, or partners. RBI's KYC Master Direction and PMLA requirements extend to legal entities, not just individuals.
Manual KYB is slow, error-prone, and expensive. A single business verification can take 5–15 days when relying on physical document collection, registry lookups, and manual cross-referencing. A KYB API compresses this to minutes.
For platforms that onboard hundreds of businesses daily — marketplaces, payment processors, lending platforms — a KYB API is not a nice-to-have. It is a scaling requirement.
Entity & Registration Verification
CIN / LLPIN Lookup — Validate the Corporate Identification Number or LLP Identification Number against MCA records. Confirm active status and entity type.
GST Verification — Verify GSTIN registration status, legal name, trade name, constitution, and registered address from the GST portal.
PAN Verification — Confirm the entity's PAN card is active and matches the MCA-registered name.
MSME / Udyam Registration — Verify MSME registration status for businesses claiming MSME benefits or seeking priority sector lending.
FSSAI / Trade Licences — Validate industry-specific licences for food, pharma, or other regulated sectors.
Registered Address — Verify the entity's registered address matches the address provided by the business during onboarding.
Directors & Beneficial Ownership
Director Verification — Retrieve all current and past directors from MCA records. Cross-reference their PAN and Aadhaar for individual identity confirmation.
Beneficial Ownership — Identify individuals with 10% or more beneficial ownership as required by PMLA. Map the full ownership chain through holding structures.
DIN Validation — Confirm Director Identification Numbers are active and not disqualified under the Companies Act.
Charge Register — Check for existing charges (liens) registered against the company's assets. Critical for lending decisions.
Related Party Mapping — Identify cross-directorships and common directors across multiple entities to detect potential conflicts of interest.
PEP & Sanctions Screening — Screen directors and beneficial owners against global PEP databases and sanctions lists.
Financial & Tax Data
When to Run KYB
Merchant Onboarding — Payment gateways and aggregators must verify every merchant before enabling transactions. KYB automates this at scale.
Vendor & Supplier Onboarding — Enterprise procurement teams verify vendor legitimacy, GST compliance, and ownership before issuing purchase orders.
B2B Lending — Lenders evaluating business loans must verify entity status, financial health, and beneficial ownership for credit decisions.
Marketplace Verification — Two-sided marketplaces verify sellers and service providers to maintain platform trust and regulatory compliance.
Partnership & Alliance — Before entering partnerships, verify the counterparty's registration, standing, and authorised signatories.
Ongoing Monitoring — Periodically re-verify business entities to detect changes in status, directors, or ownership that affect risk.
Building a KYB Flow
# Verify a business entity curl --request POST \ --url https://api.scofit.app/v1/kyb/verify \ --header 'Authorization: Bearer sk_live_...' \ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \ --data '{ "cin": "U72200MH2018PTC123456", "gstin": "27AABCT1234F1Z5", "consent": "yes", "purpose": "merchant_onboarding" }' # → Response { "status": "success", "entity_name": "TechNova Solutions Pvt Ltd", "entity_status": "ACTIVE", "incorporation_date": "2018-06-14", "directors": [ { "name": "Priya Sharma", "din": "01234567", "status": "ACTIVE" } ], "beneficial_owners": [ { "name": "Priya Sharma", "ownership_pct": 65 } ], "gst_active": true, "compliance_score": 92 }
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