Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

A SignCare account with access to the External API (contact your account manager if you don't).
Your API Key (X-API-KEY) and App ID (X-API-APP-ID) — available from your SignCare portal.
curl, Postman, or any HTTP client you're comfortable with.

Step 1 — Health check (no authentication)

Confirm connectivity to our Stage environment. No API key required for this one endpoint.

curl https://uat-ext.signcare.io/api/ping

Expected response:

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "pong",
  "timestamp": "2026-04-21T10:00:00Z"
}

If you see this, you're ready to call an authenticated endpoint.

Step 2 — Your first authenticated call

Let's verify a PAN number. Replace YOUR_API_KEY and YOUR_APP_ID with your credentials.

curl -X POST https://uat-ext.signcare.io/api/v1/pan/verify \
  -H "X-API-KEY: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-API-APP-ID: YOUR_APP_ID" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "pan": "ABCDE1234F",
    "consent": "Y",
    "consent_text": "I hear by declare my consent agreement for fetching my information via SignCare API"
  }'

A successful response looks like:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "pan": "ABCDE1234F",
    "name": "RAM KUMAR",
    "status": "VALID",
    "category": "Individual"
  },
  "request_id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
  "timestamp": "2026-04-21T10:00:00Z"
}

Consent fields are mandatory for any verification that retrieves personal data from a government or financial database. See Authentication — Consent for the legal basis.

Step 3 — Switch to Production

When you're ready for live traffic, change only the hostname:

- https://uat-ext.signcare.io
+ https://ext.signcare.io

Your X-API-KEY and X-API-APP-ID are the same in both environments — no separate credentials for stage/live.

Common pitfalls

Missing headers? You'll get a 401 with "Missing or invalid X-API-KEY header". Both X-API-KEY and X-API-APP-ID are required on every request except the health check.

Rate-limited? A 429 response means you exceeded our per-key or per-IP threshold. Back off and retry with exponential delay. See Rate Limits.

Open 🤖 Ask AI in a new tab. Paste your failing curl output or error message — it returns a concrete fix plus the corrected request. Faster than reading through docs linearly when something's wrong.

Next steps

Browse the SignCare Core API reference for all 40+ verification endpoints.
Read Authentication to understand the security model.
Plan your error handling with Error Codes.
If you use long-running operations (eSign, eStamp, biometric), read Webhooks.
For eSign integrations, the 📐 PDF Coordinate Helper lets you upload a PDF and visually grab X/Y positions for signature placement — no account needed.