Kenya Driving Licence OCR API

What Makes the Kenyan smart driving licence Hard to Parse

The Kenyan smart driving licence is issued by the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA). NTSA issues smart driving licences that show the licence number, the holder's ID number and the licence classes. Boda-boda and delivery platforms, lenders and insurers all collect them, usually from phone photos taken outdoors.

One API Call, Named Fields

The StructOCR Driver License OCR API returns the licence number, the holder's name, ID number where printed, date of birth, issue and expiry dates and licence classes. Dates are returned as YYYY-MM-DD. Send a JPG, PNG, WebP or PDF as Base64 JSON or as a multipart upload; there is no SDK to embed in your app, although official Python and Node.js SDKs are available. Step-by-step code is in the Python guide. Usage is billed per successful scan with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Where Teams Use It in Kenya

Integration & AI Prompts

Install the official SDK and pass a photo of the licence. Full request and response details are in the driver license API reference.

# pip install structocr
import os
from structocr import StructOCR

client = StructOCR(api_key=os.environ["STRUCTOCR_API_KEY"])
result = client.scan_driver_license("licence.jpg")

if result.get("success"):
    data = result["data"]
    print(data["document_number"], data["surname"], data["date_of_expiry"])

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "drivers_license",
    "country_code": "KEN",
    "region": null,
    "document_number": "DL1234567",
    "personal_number": "12345678",
    "surname": "OTIENO",
    "given_names": "BRIAN",
    "sex": null,
    "date_of_birth": "1993-04-18",
    "place_of_birth": null,
    "date_of_issue": "2022-06-01",
    "date_of_expiry": "2025-05-31",
    "date_of_first_issue": null,
    "issuing_authority": null,
    "address": null,
    "vehicle_class": "A2, B"
  }
}