Costanoa Ventures and Norrsken22 back Smile Identity in $20M Series B round

News Summary

  • However, the recent launch of its Document Verification product has allowed Smile Identity to expand its capabilities; now, it can cover a billion identities and verification processes globally, the chief executive said during the interview.
  • The KYC verification upstart, which has since doubled its client base since 2021 and now serves over 100 businesses in banking, fintech, education, agriculture and e-commerce, also claims to perform between 2 to 2.5 million monthly identity checks.
  • The company hopes that its war chest allows it to partner closely with ID authorities and governments to create consumer consent standards and enforce local African data protection laws across the continent.Smile Identity helps clients mitigate fraud and onboard new customers more efficiently.
  • Another area of growth, Straub noted, was that Smile Identity processed over 30 million identity verifications in 2021; that’s over half the KYC checks the startup has recorded since inception: about 50 million.
  • The deduplication product guarantees that when the end customers sign to a client’s platform, they are mandated to take a selfie at onboarding against their IDs, making it easier to identify the customer better using their faces and reject subsequent new sign-ups in the case of fraud.
  • Smile Identity has also expanded on its Business Verification (KYB) solution, which entails 30 detailed business lookups such as registration number, incorporation, directors, beneficiaries and proprietor status.
The importance of KYC and identity verification in an increasing fintech landscape like Africas cannot be overemphasized. As thousands of financial institutions serve millions of Africans, stringent [+6475 chars]