The stakes
Identity is the silent layer underneath modern life. When you open a bank account, sign a mortgage, vote, or onboard a supplier, something behind the scenes is checking that you are who you say you are, and that the company you represent actually exists. When that layer is slow, everything on top of it is slow.
For people, the photo and number flow is a solved problem. For companies it isn't. Verifying a company requires knowing whether it exists today, who owns it, who runs it, what its current legal status is, and who the ultimate beneficial owner is. Those answers live in registries, and registries were not built for sub-second responses.
The mandate
BankID is Norway's national trust mark, used by 4.7 million people across banks, government, and business. It is the country's default way of proving identity, and it is increasingly the country's default way of verifying companies. To run company verification inside its flows, BankID needed registry-level truth delivered at the speed of a button click. Not a daily export. A live API call inside the customer journey.
What we built
A live company verification API drawn directly from the official registry. One call returns the current state. Company exists, current legal status, registered address, directors, ownership structure, ultimate beneficial owner. The data refreshes against the source rather than sitting on a cached snapshot.
The API is wired into BankID's KYC checks so the verification happens inline. A bank onboarding a new business customer through BankID does not wait for a back-office step. The check happens while the user is still on the page.
What changed
A company verification that used to take a day or more, with someone pulling an extract, someone checking ownership, and someone signing off, now happens in the time it takes a page to load. Every company KYC check that runs through BankID is hitting that API.
Why it matters
A national trust mark only works if the company data underneath it is current. We keep it current.