Smile Identity Raises $7m To Build Identity Verification Tools For African Businesses

Smile Identity has raised $7million in Series A funding to build identity tool and know your customers (KYC) compliance infrastructure for African businesses.

The Africa-focused identity verification company announced the development on Thursday.

The World Bank estimates that one billion people globally face the challenge of providing their identity which has frustrated businesses online and offline.

The lender said 81 per cent of the one billion people live in Africa and South Asia.

It has been very difficult for Africans to access online facilities over identity problem. In Africa, over 500 million people do not have any form of identity.

Smiles said the fund would make it “easy for Africans to prove their identity online, by unifying ID verification and KYC compliance infrastructure across Africa.”

Mark Straub founded Smile Identity with William Bares in 2017 and has spread across Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda and Uganda.

Nigeria and many other business startups have witnessed multimillion-dollar seed funding from foreign investors, but smile said the internet economy runs on trust which could be a big issue for upcoming startups.

In the first quarter of 2021, tech startups raised $219m.

Within the next 10 years, 16 per cent of the world’s Internet users will reside in Africa, according to the firm.

Smiles added, “We believe one of the keys to unlocking Africa’s inherent potential is universal digital identity. Solving this will lead to faster economic growth for Africa.

“This is why our new round of funding is so important. This new capital will help us expand into more markets, add support for more ID types, build custom consent layers compatible with local data privacy legislation, support users without smart-phones, and hire more Engineers across Africa to help us achieve our vision.”