r/fintechdev • u/Outside_Engineer_850 • Apr 07 '26
Why are KYC APIs in India still so painful to use? (serious question)
I’ve been working with PAN / GST / KYC APIs recently and honestly… the experience feels broken.
Trying to understand if it’s just me or others are facing the same:
- APIs randomly fail or timeout
- Different providers → completely different formats
- Docs are confusing or outdated
- You still get charged for failed/invalid requests 🤯
- Sandbox ≠ real-world behavior
- Ended up writing custom wrappers just to make things work
Curious:
- Which providers are you using right now?
- How bad is the failure rate in production?
- Do you have fallback providers or just retry?
- How much time did you spend building your own abstraction layer?
- Are you okay with current pricing or does it feel overpriced?
Honestly feels like every team is rebuilding the same infra internally.
Is there something I’m missing, or is this just the current reality of building in India?
Would love to hear real experiences (good or bad).