Smile Identity, a Lagos, Nigeria-based company focused on ID verification and KYC compliance through Artificial Intelligence, raised $7M in Series A Funding.
The round, which brought total funding to over $11M, was led by Costanoa Ventures with participation from CRE Venture Capital, Local Globe, Intercept Ventures, Future Africa Ventures, Khosla Impact ValueStream Ventures, Beta Ventures, 500 Startups and Story Ventures. In conjunction with this round, John Cowgill of Costanoa, will be joining Smile Identity’s board.
The company plans to use the new funding to improve its services, expand across more markets, add support for more ID types and hire more engineers and support staff across Africa.
Led by Mark Straub, CEO, Smile Identity provides Identity Verification, Digital KYC, User Onboarding, Document Verification, Liveness Checks, Face Verification, Anti-fraud, and Identity Data Deduplication tools.
To standardize identity verification across the continent and provide a single solution for a new generation of African companies, Smile Identity works with local ID authorities and has built a platform that combines ID validation with proprietary face verification and liveness checks to support non-surveillance, consent-based access and financial inclusion. The company performs over 1 million identity checks every month across Africa and its software is used in banking, fintech, ride sharing, worker verification, public social welfare programs, and telecommunications. Customers include payments companies like Paystack, Paga and Chippercash; neo-banks like Kudabank and Umba; traditional banks like Stanbic IBTC; cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Luno, and Paxful; and supply-chain businesses like Twiga.
With subsidiaries, branch offices and engineers in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda and counting, Smile Identity’s team is made up of people from 12 countries, including 8 African nations.
FinSMEs
09/07/2021