FOR STUDENTS

Proof you are a student, in one second.

No queue at the registry. No letter to collect. A bank, a landlord or NELFUND asks whether you are enrolled, and the answer comes from your institution’s own record — with your permission, and only the parts you agreed to.

Free, and always will be. Bona is paid by the organisations doing the checking, never by the student being checked.

Three things you can do that you could not before.

Prove it without asking anyone

Your Bona ID carries your NSID and a QR code. Scanning it returns the live answer from your institution, not the copy in your pocket — so it cannot be out of date, and it cannot be forged by editing a screenshot.

Works offline, with the date it was last refreshed shown on the card.
Decide what each one sees

A request arrives listing the exact fields an organisation wants, with your real values shown next to them. Status is always included. Programme, level and institution are yours to tick or leave.

Every grant has an end date, and you can end it earlier.
See who has checked you

Every check ever made against your NSID is listed with the organisation, the date and the fields they were shown — including checks made at Tier 0, which need no permission.

Each entry has an "I don’t recognise this" button that opens a case.

Claiming takes about four minutes.

You are not signing up. The record already exists — your institution put it there. You are proving it belongs to you and taking control of it.

01
Find your record

Your name, your institution and your matric number. If your school has uploaded you, your record is already there waiting — you are not creating anything.

02
Prove it is you

Your NIN, checked against NIMC. Bona matches it and stores a token, never the number itself, and it is never returned to anyone who verifies you.

03
Confirm your phone

A one-time code by SMS. It arrives even if your line is on the NCC Do-Not-Disturb register — these go out as transactional messages, not marketing.

04
Your NSID is yours

A permanent national student ID in the form NS-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. It survives a change of programme, a transfer between institutions, and graduation.

If NIMC cannot match your NIN

It happens, and it is usually a spelling difference between what your school typed and what NIMC holds. Your claim is not rejected — it goes to a person at Bona to review, you keep whatever you have already completed, and you are told what we are waiting on. Nothing about your enrolment changes while you wait.

THE AWKWARD CASE

If it says we cannot confirm you, that is not an accusation.

Bona works out when you are expected to finish — your entry date, your programme’s duration, minus any direct-entry credit, plus every strike and closure your institution has declared. Past that date there is a three-month grace period, and after it your record needs your institution to confirm you are still there.

Almost every time this happens, it is because a registry has not uploaded since the last session. It is not a judgement about you and it is not something you did. You file a re-validation from the app, a named person at your institution reviews it, and you can see exactly where it is.

Confirm you are still enrolled
WHAT A RE-VALIDATION ASKS FOR
Why you are still enrolled — a strike, a carry-over, a deferred session, an extension
Evidence, and "I don’t have it right now" is a real answer that keeps the request moving
How much longer you need, with the resulting date shown before you send it
Anything you want the reviewer to know, in your own words
Your institution has ten working days. If it is declined you are told why, in words written for you rather than for a file, and you can appeal.

Nothing here can be used against you.

Bona holds your enrolment and nothing else. There is no column in this system for your grades, your fees or your conduct — so no bank, employer or landlord can ever be sold them, and no future version of us can quietly start collecting them without breaking a promise made in public.

WHAT A VERIFIER CAN LEARN
That you are enrolled, and where
Your programme and level, if you allow it
When you are expected to complete, if you allow it
Your name and date of birth, only at Tier 2 and only with your consent
WHAT NOBODY CAN EVER LEARN
Your grades or transcript
Your fees or any debt
Any disciplinary record
Your attendance
Your NIN — it is matched, never shown or returned

Your rights, in plain terms.

Can I refuse to share something?

Yes, field by field, except your enrolment status itself — an organisation that has asked to verify you is asking that one question, and there is nothing to answer without it. Everything else is optional, and refusing is not recorded as a black mark anywhere.

Can I take permission back?

At any time, from Requests in the app. The next call that organisation makes gets a consent prompt instead of your data. There is no notice period and nobody has to approve it.

What if I see a check I do not recognise?

Press "I don’t recognise this" on the entry. It opens a case with Bona, the organisation is asked to justify the check against its declared use, and you are told what came of it. Consumers with unexplained query patterns get suspended — that is a real thing we do.

Something in my record is wrong.

Your institution owns the underlying data, so corrections are made there — but you can raise it from the app and Bona routes it to the right registry with your record attached. You will see it move.

What happens when I graduate?

Your status becomes graduated and stays permanently verifiable. That is the useful half: an employer checking a degree five years from now gets the same answer, from the same institution, without a transcript request.

What if I leave and come back?

Your NSID is national and permanent, and it holds more than one enrolment over time — an ND then an HND, a transfer between institutions, a programme change. The history stays attached to you rather than to a school.

Your record already exists. Take charge of it.

Claiming is free and takes about four minutes. After that, proving you are a student is one screen — and you can see everyone who has ever asked.