South African Identity Document OCR
Turn passports, IDs, and driver’s licences into structured JSON.
Built for South African KYC, lending, and onboarding flows. One API call, structured data in seconds — MRZ-compliant, POPIA-ready.
50 free requests every month. No credit card.
Example
curl -X POST https://jongaocr.co.za/api/v1/ocr/passport \ -H "Authorization: Bearer jonga_..." \ -F "image=@passport.jpg"# → {"name": "JABULANI", ..., "confidence": 0.97 }Why Jonga
Built for South African identity, end to end.
Fast, intelligent extraction
AI-powered vision returns structured JSON in 2–8 seconds.
- No templates to build or maintain
- No per-document tuning
- Confidence scores on every field
Built for SA identity
First-class support for Smart IDs, Green Books, driver’s licences, and passports. ICAO MRZ-compliant parsing.
- All 6 SA identity document types
- International passport support via MRZ
- Tuned for local document quirks
POPIA-ready from day 1
Documents are processed in-memory — never written to disk. No training on your data.
- In-memory processing only
- Token-level audit logs
- SA data residency on Enterprise
How it works
Three steps to structured data.
Sign up
Create a free account. 50 requests per month, no credit card.
Create a token
Issue an API token from your dashboard. Scope to specific endpoints or use * for all.
POST a document
Send multipart form-data to /api/v1/ocr/<type>. Get structured JSON back in seconds.
Six document types. One consistent API.
From SA Smart ID to international passports.
SA Smart ID — Front
Name, ID number, date of birth, citizenship
SA Smart ID — Back
Card number and date of issue
SA Green Book
Legacy barcoded ID book
International Passport
ICAO MRZ compliant, any country
SA Driver’s Licence — Front
Licence details and vehicle codes
SA Driver’s Licence — Back
Visible text from back (barcode encrypted)
Drop-in for any stack.
curl, TypeScript, Python. Pick your poison.
curl
curl -X POST https://jongaocr.co.za/api/v1/ocr/passport \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $JONGA_TOKEN" \
-F "image=@passport.jpg"TypeScript
const form = new FormData();
form.append('image', imageBlob);
const res = await fetch('https://jongaocr.co.za/api/v1/ocr/passport', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.JONGA_TOKEN}` },
body: form,
});
const data = await res.json();Python
import requests
res = requests.post(
'https://jongaocr.co.za/api/v1/ocr/passport',
headers={'Authorization': f'Bearer {os.environ["JONGA_TOKEN"]}'},
files={'image': open('passport.jpg', 'rb')},
)
data = res.json()Simple, predictable pricing.
Start free. Upgrade when you need more.
Ready to integrate South African document OCR?
50 free requests, no credit card, no call with sales. Build your first integration in minutes.