Smile Identity, a KYC compliance and ID verification firm with headquarters in Nigeria recently terminated the employment of eight of its staff members in what the company describes as an effort to meet its profitability goals.
One of the most well-known names in the ID verification market, Smile Identity is a service that assists new businesses, such as banks and fintech companies, in carrying out customer identity verification processes. The corporation has verified to TechCabal that it terminated the employment of eight employees at the beginning of the month of June.
A portion of an email sent by the company to a media outlet read as follows: “To better navigate the changing macroeconomic landscape of the tech startup world, we decided to reduce our team size to focus on profitability and product development. We let go of 8 employees, representing less than 10% of our workforce.”
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Response to the development
Given that the company had just announced the successful conclusion of a $20 million Series B round of funding in February of 2023, many people are going to be taken aback by the decision to lay off employees. According to a source, Smile Identity stated that the cash would be used to increase hiring efforts in East, Southern, and Western Africa in keeping with the company’s goal of expanding further throughout the African continent. Appruve, an identity verification software company based in Ghana, was purchased by the young company in April 2023. This move allowed the company to spread its footprints across Africa and strengthen its position as the African continent’s premier identity verification and digital KYC supplier.
Why Smile was established
Smile Identity was founded in 2017 with the intention of making it simple for people of African descent to confirm their identity no matter where they are in the world. During a trip to India, the company’s cofounder, Mark Straub, realised how challenging it was to provide evidence of one’s identity. After some time had passed, he revisited the issue while he was touring throughout Africa. He saw an opportunity to assist Africans anywhere in the globe in simply proving their identities, and given that India was still in the early phases of implementing Aadhar, he regarded this as a perfect time to do it. The concept of constructing a Smile Identity originated from this point forth.
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Smile Identity is now working on developing new tools and software that will completely change how millions of people in Africa can verify and confirm their identities online. The artificial intelligence and identity verification solutions offered by this company have a rate of accuracy of 99.8 percent and have been tailored specifically for use with African faces.
Chipper Cash, Paga, Paystack, Twiga, and Opay are just few of the numerous enterprises in Africa that use the technology developed by Smile Identity. The technology is also used by a great number of other businesses.
Smile Identity has established itself as a leading competitor in the Know Your Customer (KYC) market in Africa. The company was co-founded by American entrepreneurs Mark Straub and William Bares. Four years after its initial introduction, Smile Identity is currently operating in six different markets across Africa, including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda. It conducts more than a million identification checks on a monthly basis and has verified a total of 250 million IDs for its customers, who include Paystack, Binance, Kuda, Paxful, and Chippercash, among others.