CBE Verification
How to verify a CBE receipt
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is the largest bank in Ethiopia with over 70 million customers. Tuna verifies CBE receipts using their JSON API and PDF parsing. Here's everything you need to know.
What you need
- • Reference number — FT numbers (like FT25211G11JQ) or receipt IDs (like CHQ0FJ403O)
- • Account number — Last 8 digits of your CBE account (required for FT references)
Step-by-step verification
Find your reference number
Look at your CBE receipt, SMS notification, or mobile app screenshot. The reference is usually labeled "Ref:", "Reference:", or "Transaction ID:". For fund transfers, it starts with "FT". For cheques, it starts with "CHQ".
Select CBE as the bank
On the verification form, select "Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE)" from the bank dropdown. Or just paste the reference — Tuna auto-detects CBE from FT/CHQ prefixes.
Enter your account number
CBE requires the last 8 digits of the account number that received the transfer. This is a security measure — without it, CBE won't return receipt data. Your account number is safe — it's only used for this single API call and never stored.
Click Verify
Tuna calls CBE's JSON API, parses the response, and returns structured data: amount, payer name, receiver name, date, and transaction status. The whole process takes under 5 seconds.
CBE receipt formats
CBE uses several receipt formats depending on the transaction type:
- • Fund transfers (FT) — JSON API response with amount, payer, receiver, date. Requires account number.
- • Cheques (CHQ) — PDF receipt with transaction details. Parsed using OCR.
- • CBE Birr mobile — HTML response from mobile app. Parsed using DOM extraction.
- • QR codes — Embedded in receipts, contains receipt URL. Scanned and verified automatically.
Common errors
"Account number required"
CBE FT references need the receiving account number. Enter the last 8 digits.
"Receipt not found"
The reference number might be incorrect, or the receipt is older than CBE's retention period (typically 90 days).
"Bank endpoint unreachable"
CBE's API might be temporarily down. Try again in a few minutes.
API verification
You can also verify CBE receipts programmatically using the Tuna API:
Self-hosting
If you need to verify CBE receipts in bulk or want to run Tuna on your own infrastructure, you can self-host it. The CBE parser works with Docker: