Read an ID once, correctly, and keep nothing
Software for identity and compliance
We built Jonga OCR, a live API that turns a photograph of a South African identity document into structured JSON without storing it.
What goes wrong, and what we do about it.
Identity numbers are retyped by hand
One transposed digit and the record fails every check downstream, usually weeks later.
The document is read and the fields returned structured, with anything unreadable coming back empty rather than guessed.
Foreign tools do not know our documents
The SA smart card, the green book and the licence card are not in the training set of tools built for American licences.
A separate endpoint per South African document type, tuned to the layout it actually reads.
Storing documents creates a liability
An identity document sitting in a bucket is the most sensitive thing your business holds, and the hardest to justify keeping.
Processing in memory only. There is no bucket and no retention setting, because there is nothing retained.
What we build for it.
Reading the document
Six types, one response shape.
- SA smart ID card, front and back
- Green barcoded ID book
- Driver licence, front and back
- Any passport built to the ICAO standard
Not keeping it
The part that matters to your risk officer.
- Processed in memory, never written to storage
- No personal data in application logs
- Bearer tokens stored as hashes and shown once
Fitting your process
Into onboarding, not beside it.
- A POST and a bearer token
- Unreadable fields return null, never a guess
- Confidence derived from how much was actually read
- Usage and quota visible per token
What this has to answer to
- POPIA
- Useful inside a FICA process
- No document retention
The services this uses
Questions about identity and compliance.
What accuracy should we expect?
We do not publish a number. Everyone in this category quotes one, measured on documents nobody outside their company has seen. Jonga OCR gives fifty requests a month free and every response reports its own real latency, so you can point it at your own documents and find out.
Is the data kept in South Africa?
Not today. Data residency in South Africa is on the roadmap rather than something we currently offer, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
Can you verify an ID number against Home Affairs?
No. Jonga OCR reads what is on the document. Confirming that the person and the number are genuinely linked is a different service with different access, and we will not pretend to offer it.
Tell us what your business is running on right now.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no slide deck. We will tell you whether this is something we can build and roughly what it would take. If it is not a fit, we will say so on the call.