Business verifications

When a business signs up with you, a verification checks what its applicant told you against CAC’s register: the registration number, the business name, whether CAC lists it as active and, if you send their names, whether the people you’re dealing with are its officers. You get one result and each check behind it, not a copy of CAC’s record.

Verify a business

POST /v1/businesses/verifications with the number and name your applicant gave, and optionally up to 10 officer names.

curl https://api.fastcac.com/v1/businesses/verifications \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FASTCAC_KEY" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"number": "RC 7654321", "name": "Ada Foods Ltd", "officers": ["Ada Obi"]}'

Response (201)

{
  "object": "business_verification",
  "id": "bver_6BMrXa53Vaxt8BIPwKeQv5",
  "number": "7654321",
  "type": "RC",
  "result": "match",
  "checks": {
    "number_found": true,
    "name": {
      "result": "exact",
      "score": 1.0,
      "registered_name": "ADA FOODS LIMITED"
    },
    "active": true,
    "status": "ACTIVE",
    "officers": [
      {
        "name": "Ada Obi",
        "matched": true,
        "role": "director"
      }
    ]
  },
  "amount_charged": "200.00",
  "transaction_id": "wtx_6nChZbZ2SuiFgTDt5VSNlI",
  "created_at": "2026-10-28T15:16:04Z"
}

The result

`result`	When
`match`	The name is exact, CAC lists the business as active, and every officer you sent matched.
`partial`	The name is close but not exact, the business isn’t active, or an officer didn’t match.
`no_match`	The name is a different business’s.
`not_found`	CAC has no business with that number.

result is a summary; decide your own rules from checks. For example, you might accept partial when only status is INACTIVE and ask the applicant to file their annual returns.

Check	What it is
`number_found`	CAC has a business with the number.
`name.result`	`exact` once case, punctuation, spacing and spellings such as LTD/LIMITED, PLC and &/AND are ignored. Otherwise the distinctive part of each name is compared, leaving out endings like LIMITED, NIGERIA or VENTURES: `close` when they’re the same or nearly (so “Ada Foods Ltd” is close to ADA FOODS NIGERIA LIMITED), `no_match` when they aren’t (ZENITH NIGERIA LIMITED isn’t close to ZEST NIGERIA LIMITED).
`name.score`, `name.registered_name`	How similar the distinctive parts are, from 0 to 1, and the name on CAC’s register.
`active`, `status`	Whether CAC lists it as `ACTIVE`, and its status as CAC writes it.
`officers`	One entry per name you sent: `matched`, and the officer’s `role` when it did. Names match word for word, in any order, when every word of the shorter one is in the longer one: “Ada Obi” matches ADA CHIOMA OBI, and “Ada Chioma Obi” matches ADA OBI. Initials count (“A. C. Obi”), as do common spellings like Mohammed and Muhammad, but not misspellings, so relatives on the same board don’t match each other. Only proprietors, directors, secretaries and persons with significant control count. `null` when you sent none.

A number in more than one register needs type (400 type_required, as with lookups). GET /v1/businesses/verifications/{id} returns it again, free. We keep only the result and the checks (encrypted, since they hold the names you sent), never CAC’s record or its officer list.

Pricing

Verification	Price
Number, name and status	Free, including `not_found`
With officer names	₦200 from the wallet of the key’s mode

The current price is on the Pricing page; a charge shows as a business_verification_charge in your transactions, and amount_charged is "0.00" for a free one.

Outcome with officer names	Charged
A result	Yes
`not_found`: officers aren’t checked	No
`503 lookup_unavailable`: CAC’s records didn’t answer	No: charged, then refunded (`business_verification_refund`)
`503 cac_search_unavailable`: CAC’s search didn’t answer. Checked before any charge.	No
`402 insufficient_balance`: the wallet can’t cover it. Nothing is checked.	No
`400`: a name, number or officer name isn’t valid (each officer needs at least two words)	No

Send an Idempotency-Key: a retry with the same key gets the first answer and isn’t charged again. Live verifications allow 60 a minute per organization.

When the business isn’t registered

A not_found applicant can register their business name without leaving your product: see Registrations.

Test mode

Test verifications never reach CAC. Every number is the test business: ADA FOODS VENTURES when type is BN, ADA FOODS LIMITED otherwise, active, with ADA CHIOMA OBI as its officer. So {"number": "RC 7654321", "name": "Ada Foods Ltd", "officers": ["Ada Obi"]} is a match, and a different name or officer gives the other results. ?simulate=not_found and ?simulate=inactive force those answers and ?simulate=cac_search_unavailable gives its 503. With officer names, lookup_unavailable gives the other 503 and insufficient_balance the 402; without them nothing is fetched or charged, so those two don’t apply.

Get started

Dashboard

Registering a business

Business data

Webhooks

API basics

Resources

Going live

Verify a business

The result

Pricing

When the business isn’t registered

Test mode

​Verify a business

​The result

​Pricing

​When the business isn’t registered

​Test mode

Verify a business

The result

Pricing

When the business isn’t registered

Test mode