How to appraoch API call from a external site - Issue with Invalid credentials. "Invalid credentials."

Hello

I have an issue that I cannot resolve, so I hope community might share some light. I have Laravel App, and it has APIs. Mostly they work fine, except when I get external request and that does not work - I get Invalid credentials response

So my kernel.php has this

protected $middlewareGroups = [
         'web' => [
        \App\Http\Middleware\EncryptCookies::class,
        \Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\AddQueuedCookiesToResponse::class,
        \Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\Language::class,
        \Illuminate\View\Middleware\ShareErrorsFromSession::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken::class,
    ],

        'api' => [
            \App\Http\Middleware\EncryptCookies::class,
            \Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\AddQueuedCookiesToResponse::class,
            \Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class,
            \Illuminate\View\Middleware\ShareErrorsFromSession::class,
            \App\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken::class
        ],
    ];

my RouteServiceProvide.php

protected function mapWebRoutes(Router $router)
    {
        $router->group([
            'namespace' => $this->namespace, 'middleware' => 'web',
        ], function ($router) {
            require app_path('Http/routes.php');
        });
    }
    
    protected function mapApiRoutes(Router $router){
        $router->group([
            'middleware' => 'api', 'namespace' => $this->namespace.'\API', 'prefix' => 'api'
        ], function ($router) {
            $router->group([
                'prefix' => 'v1'
            ], function(){
                require app_path('Http/api_routes.php');
            });
        });
    }

my api_routes.php

Route::get('init/{email}', 'BackAPIs@init');

And BackAPIs controller has

public function __construct() {
        $this->middleware('auth.basic');
    }

and

 function init(Request $request, $email) {

        try {
            $decrypted = decrypt($email);

.......

My external application is using the code straight from Postman (which seems to work fine and I get required responses)

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => "http://appsforce.front/api/v1/init/eyJpdiI6ImN5Y2hteTJtbGFXUjZoMkJNU3I4RHc9PSIsInZhbHVlIjoiZDJEVWRwVHJFazE2SldkSzIwMGVha1V0aEdQVDJQWjdjb2RLZ1RcL1VHQU09IiwibWFjIjoiZjM2NzA3NzIzZjc5NjkyNmRlZTgwMzAyZmEyMDQ1OTE0YTYwYTlhNGJmN2MwNzc3YTI5OGQ4NDZhNjEzYWU5YyJ9",
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    "authorization: Basic YWZAYXBwc2ZvcmNlLmNvLnVrOmFwcHNmb3JjZQ==",
    "cache-control: no-cache",
    "postman-token: 6ee8747a-0d3a-3660-09d9-c0449f1bc877"
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($err) {
  echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
  echo $response;
}
dd($response);

My problem is that I always get Invalid credentials. "Invalid credentials."

I tried many things, but it just does not want to play game. Any ideas are welcome.

Many thanks in advance.