Nigerian Identity Verification Startup, Youverify Secures $2.5 Million Seed Fund for Expansion

A $1 million seed round extension has been announced by Youverify, an identity verification firm with offices in San Francisco and Lagos, to increase its capacity from 400 million to 2 billion identities.

LoftyInc Capital and Orange Digital Ventures (ODV) took the lead in the expansion round. Along with Octerra Capital, other investors included Plug & Play Venture, Syntax Ventures, HTTP Investors, Afer Group, and Fronesyz Capital. The business raised an additional $1.5 million in startup money in 2020, bringing its total seed capital to $2.5 million.

Over the next 18 months, the company wants to increase its presence in 30 nations, with a particular emphasis on francophone, southern, and eastern Africa, where it would “hire vigorously,” according to the CEO.

The casino, travel, healthcare, and telecommunications industries are among those it also intends to target with new automated compliance tools.

Youverify was established in 2018 by CEO and Founder Gbenga Odegbami to offer financial institutions an API for address and identity verification.

Youverify helps African banks and startups automate Know Your Customer (KYC) and other compliance procedures by combining KYC and compliance tools like transaction monitoring to handle problems like fraud and anti-money laundering (AML).

By recognizing transaction patterns to highlight fraud, disabling virtual cards, and tracking them back to the individuals responsible for numerous bogus chargebacks, it fights fraud.

The business introduced its proprietary technology, Youverify OS (YVOS), to better serve its customers.

A solitary platform for automating due diligence is offered by Youverify OS. It provides fintechs with an enterprise-grade compliance solution by integrating risk and compliance management with its core identity verification technology.

Additionally, businesses can utilize its other product, vFORM, a low- and no-code tool, to use a drag-and-drop builder to construct a custom process for onboarding new customers.

Youverify asserts that it has served over 400 institutions and high-growth businesses by growing its customer base by 300 percent.

It also claims that over the past year, more than 5 million applications have helped its clients acquire personnel, sell financial products, and remotely onboard ride-hailing drivers. This growth in application processes has been more than 1,000 percent.

Additionally, the YouID digital identity platform from Youverify attracted over 500,000 users, and 600 service providers are on the waitlist for the continent. According to the business, last year’s Accounting Rate of Return (ARR) was greater than $1 million.

Currently, the business has operations in South Africa, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Uganda.