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Core Primitives

Kobo is built around three fundamental concepts: Identities, Virtual Accounts, and Ledgers.

Identities​

An Identity is the root entity in Kobo. It represents an end-user, a business, or an entity that requires financial tracking. Identities have a strictly managed lifecycle (Pending, Active, Limited, Closing, Closed) that controls what financial operations are permitted.

Virtual Accounts​

Every Identity is backed by a Virtual Account. These are real, dedicated NUBAN accounts provisioned via Nomba.

  • 1-to-1 Mapping: An identity has exactly one active virtual account at a time.
  • Auto-Provisioning: When an identity is created, Kobo automatically orchestrates the provisioning of the virtual account.

Ledgers​

The Ledger is the immutable source of truth for all balances. Kobo uses an append-only transaction system.

  • Inbound Entries: Represent money credited to the virtual account via a reconciled bank transfer.
  • Outbound Entries: Represent money moving out of the system (e.g., payouts or sweeps).

Your application never calculates balances manually. Instead, it queries the Ledger to get the computed balance for a given Identity at any point in time.

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