Nafath single sign-on: trusted national identity login for your app

What is Nafath, and why do businesses use it?

Nafath (نفاذ) is Saudi Arabia's unified national single sign-on and digital identity service. It lets citizens and residents prove who they are online using the same trusted credentials they use for government services, confirming each login with a tap in the Nafath app (or a one-time code).

For a business, adding Nafath sign-in means a user's identity is verified against the national record — not just an email and password they typed in. That brings real advantages:

• Trusted identity — you know the person is who they claim to be, which is the foundation of KYC (know-your-customer) and any regulated service.
• Less fraud — far fewer fake or duplicate accounts, because each account is tied to a real, verified individual.
• Faster onboarding — a one-tap confirmation replaces long forms and manual document checks.
• Trust — Saudi users already recognise and rely on Nafath, so seeing it in your app signals seriousness and security.

Typical use cases

Nafath sign-in makes sense for any service where you genuinely need to know a user's verified identity. Common examples include:

• Fintech and banking — account opening, digital KYC, loan applications and any flow bound by financial-sector regulation.
• Healthcare — patient portals and telemedicine, where matching a person to the right medical record matters.
• Government and semi-government — e-services and portals that must confirm a citizen or resident before granting access.
• Real estate and legal — contracts, rental and property platforms where the parties' identities must be certain.
• Any verified-user service — marketplaces, insurance, education and subscription platforms that want real accounts instead of anonymous sign-ups.

If your product would benefit from replacing manual ID uploads with an instant, government-grade check, Nafath is usually the right fit.

How Nafath integration works, at a high level

You don't connect to Nafath casually — access is arranged through the official, approved onboarding process, and eligibility can depend on your activity and the type of service you offer. Once approved, the flow follows a familiar pattern:

• Onboarding & approval — your organisation is registered and provisioned with the credentials needed to call the service, through the official channel.
• Login request — when a user chooses "Sign in with Nafath", your app starts an authentication request (an OAuth-style redirect-and-callback flow) and the user enters their national ID number.
• App confirmation — the user approves the request in the Nafath app, typically by matching a number shown on your screen, or via a one-time code.
• Verified result — your backend receives a confirmed identity result, which you use to create or match the user's account.

The important engineering detail is what happens next: the verified identity data that comes back must be received on the server side, validated, and stored securely — never exposed in the browser or logged carelessly. Getting this handshake and the data handling right is the core of a solid Nafath integration.

Compliance and handling verified data

Because Nafath returns real, government-grade identity information, how you store and use that data is not optional — it falls squarely under Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL). A responsible integration means:

• Collecting only the identity fields you actually need, and being clear with users about why.
• Encrypting personal data in transit and at rest, and restricting who and what can read it.
• Keeping an auditable trail of verifications without over-retaining sensitive data.
• Having a lawful basis and a clear privacy notice for the identity data you process.

We cover the wider obligations in our PDPL compliance guide — it's worth reading alongside any identity or KYC project.

How Tech Corners helps

We integrate Nafath sign-in into custom apps and platforms — handling the approved onboarding, building the authentication flow end to end, and making sure the verified identity data is received server-side, validated and stored securely in line with the PDPL. Whether you're adding trusted login to a new fintech product or retrofitting KYC into an existing platform, we build it so identity verification is reliable in the background and simple for your users. We also handle related Saudi integrations like ZATCA e-invoicing and Mada payments.