One of the biggest challenges if you’re living in Kenya or any other place that residential addresses aren’t popular is when you are asked to provide proof of address. PayPal and other organizations that deal with money transfer may be required by law to verify users. Even if it’s not required by law, as a software engineer I learned it’s better to know your users in case they get hacked or forget their password it will make the account recovery process less hectic.

It’s important to verify your account as soon as you can when asked or you’ll end up losing some features like sending/receiving funds. As of writing this, the
documents you submit should have been issued within the past 12 months explained in this article.

What NOT to do:

Do NOT be tempted to fake documents, there’s a ton of shady online services where people sell fake documents like for KPLC utility bill. So many people have had their accounts closed and it’s because of frauds like that. It may have worked for someone else but that’s not a risk advice you to take, your hard-earned money will just be gone like that.

How to verify address:

  1. KRA Certificate – If it was issued withing the last 12 months, then you are lucky, go ahead and use it for verification.
    If your KRA certificate is older, you can login to you account and edit then reprint the document. I would not highly recommend this even though it works because it’s never guaranteed that the changes you make will be approved by KRA. I tried when I had no other option and it took one year without response.
  2. Bank statements – This is the surest way I’d suggest because it worked for me but you have to be on the right bank. I was initially using a KCB account when I needed these documents only to realize later that KCB doesn’t include address in their bank statements.I’m not sure of other banks but I ended up registering for an equity account. Not only does equity include address in their statements but they also link with PayPal and allows direct withdrawals from PayPal to equity account through the equity mobile app.The equity bank statements are also sent to your email for free every month unlike for KCB I had to go and request physically and still pay per page printed.

Additional tips:

  • When requested for any other physical document like national id, make sure you scan it before sending. Don’t take photo with your phone and apply filters, my google play store was once rejected when I did that. I just assume it might be same with paypal.
  • Make sure the address in your bank statement is also the same in your paypal account. If it’s not just go to settings and add same address as in your account.