Nigeria KYC startup, Youverify, in its seed extension funding, raised $1 Million to extend the total size of the round, which began in 2020 to $2.5 Million.
Youverify was launched in 2018 by Dr Gbenga Odegbami. It focuses on helping financial services companies, as well as mobile operators, automate the verification processes, also known as KYC, of data such as academic background, home address, Identity, facial recognition and credit history while ensuring speedy verification.
Due to the widespread adoption of KYC Verification, the company’s revenue increased by over 1000% over the last 12 months by adding over 400 banks and various startups to its list of customers. During that same period, the company also verified over 5,000,000 applications, which was beneficial to its customers as it helped them hire talented personnel and sell its financial products among others.
As mentioned previously, the seed funding round was started in 2020 when they raised $1.5 million and now an additional $1 million. The companies that coordinated the funding round were: Orange Ventures (Leader); LoftyInc Capital Management (Co-Leader);
Octerra Capital; Plug & Play Ventures; Afer Group; Fronesyz Capital; Syntax Ventures;
HTTP Investors.
Youverify hopes to use the funding to accelerate its growth processes and continue its expansionist policy across Africa into new markets and industries. Presently, the company operates in 5 African countries namely: South Africa; Kenya; Uganda; Ghana; Ivory Coast.
Over the next 18 months, the company plans to commence operations across 30 countries and increase its capacity for IDs verification from 400 million to 2 billion.
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Presently, the company only offers services to fintech companies and mobile operators but plans to expand its activities to the gaming, travelling, healthcare and telecommunications industries by developing new automated compliance products.
In a statement, the CEO and co-founder of Youverify, Dr Gbenga Odegbami, said:
“We have seen the huge market potential in the fragmented regtech market across Africa. We’re kicking off plans to plug in the gaps by expanding our marketplace to emerging and existing startups and traditional financial services companies across the continent. Our unique approach to providing compliance solutions gives us a strategic advantage due to our enterprise platform that goes the extra mile by helping businesses automate compliance workflow beyond basic identity verification”.
Also, the principal of Orange Ventures, Gregoire de Padirac, said:
“The number of financial service companies and platforms that are embedding financial services into their products will continue to grow in sub-Saharan Africa. All those companies will need to onboard customers and go through KYC, and AML processes using a flexible solution such as Youverify. What is at stake now is to go beyond Nigeria. I am happy to use new investors joining the journey and proud to support this team since their seed round”.
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What are KYC and its benefits?
KYC is an acronym for Know-Your-Customer and is a verification process intending customers/ users undergo for the company to identify its customers. Due to the rapid rise in online transactions carried out every day on the World Wide Web (WWW), KYC has become an integral and vital aspect before accessing or completing any online transaction/activity, from opening a bank account to placing an order online. The major importance of KYC is that it helps companies or businesses have the ability to identify their clients and expose frauds which will help them to eliminate criminal activities and in general, ensures that all monetary transactions are secure, transparent and legal. Since KYC involves revealing your personal information, including your address and bank details, it will be easy to arrest a person when he or she commits fraud due to the information inputted during the KYC Verification process.
Processes of KYC in banks
Banks have to perform KYC verification for all their customers before they start using the platform to ensure that they are accepting customers that are qualified according to government authorities to use such platforms. Banks usually have specific requirements which must be done to complete your KYC verification because the government specifies them, here are the processes one must undergo before passing KYC for banks:
1) You have to submit your valid documents such as National ID Card, BVN Number, Voters Card, NIN, Etc. and personal information such as Your age, marital status, Education status, Gender, Etc.
2) Verification of the customer identity. The biometrics verification will be conducted, and the various documents provided will be accessed to confirm if they are authentic.
3) Your source of income will be checked to ascertain that you aren’t doing any illegal activity according to that country’s constitution.
4) After you have been verified, the bank will strictly monitor your activities to ensure that you aren’t performing any illegal or suspicious dealings and follow the bank rules accordingly.
E-KYC Definition
E-KYC is an acronym for electronic KYC. All the processes involved in completing your KYC verification are done online. Previously, KYC was done physically, and it involved long queues and was generally stressful. But during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a need to reduce physical contact, which meant that there was a need to take digitalise the KYC processes, which led to the invention of various electronic KYC Verification companies such as Youverify.
Benefits of KYC to businesses
1) It helps businesses to establish their customer’s identity
2) It helps businesses understand the nature of the customers’ activities.
3) Provide businesses with protection from losses and fraud due to illegal and inappropriate transactions carried out on their platform.
The benefits have proven that any big or even small startups need to have KYC verification before its users use the platform to validate the customer identity and safeguard the company from any sanctions due to illegal activities carried out on the platform.