NIGERIA – Identity verification startup Youverify has raised US$1.5 million in a seed investment round led by Orange Digital Ventures Africa.
Orange Digital Venture said in a statement that the US$1.5 million investment round will help Youverify improve its technology and accelerate business development in Nigeria and the continent.
Co-founded by CEO Gbenga Odegbami, Youverify aims to help companies automate verification processes for different types of data currently treated seperately.
“This constitutes a unique opportunity for us to take further our ambition to simplify and secure our client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff, customer onboarding, etc,” said Mr. Odegbami.
“Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal.”
Some of the data verification process that Youverify helps automate while respecting the highest standards of regulation and data protection include: identity, academic background, home address, credit history and facial recognition, while respecting the highest standards of regulation and data protection.
Grégoire de Padirac, Investment Manager at ODV noted that security matters and access to financial or telecommunications services should never be at odds with each other.
“We are proud to support Youverify, which intends to resolve this triple objective of fostering financial inclusion, strengthening security and preserving user rights over their data,” Grégoire de Padirac added.
Verification tasks were usually complex and manual for major players, fintech and large corporates, so the rise of Youverify and other RegTech startups has been key for the market in order to speed up and simplify these tasks.
Since its launch in Lagos in 2018, Youverify has already performed more than 300,000 customer registrations and verifications for some of Nigeria’s largest banks and financial companies.
