ChatGPT, and artificial intelligence. Open Banking and Peer to Peer Trading. Africa’s digital economy is exploding, with startup funding at a record high.
Yet, we must ask a fundamental question and address the elephant in the room.
“How do we sustain a high-growth digital economy in a continent filled with digitally invisible people”?
According to the World Bank, 45% of people in sub-Saharan Africa have no legal identification. It’s also a worldwide issue as around 1 in 3 adults without an ID reported difficulties in using financial services, receiving financial support from the government, applying for a job, or voting in elections.
So as Africa wanders into uncharted territories with an insatiable customer appetite, digital Identity verification must become a staple hold in public and private operations.
What is Digital ID verification?
This is the process of electronically capturing attributes about a person, validating them and verifying that they belong to the actual owner, not a ghost/bot or fraudster.
No matter what industry you serve, you must ensure your customers are exactly who they say they are. KYC (know-your-customer) processes can be hard to implement, so you need a verification partner to help make the transition from traditional to digital seamless.
Here’s how Verified.africa easily solves the biggest challenges that you and other African startups may face with digital ID Verification
Complex Customer Onboarding Process
A quarter of financial service applications are abandoned due to difficulties in the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process. This figure triples in e-commerce, with most users dropping off at signup or payment verification.
It’s hard to fault companies for this. To comply with data regulations, KYC and AML (Anti-money laundering) protocols must be strictly followed during customer onboarding. Today’s customers want a seamless and fast user experience, so verifying a customer’s identity quickly helps companies experience speedier turnaround times.
‘Verified.africa takes care of the identity verification process better than any other manual/alternate process – as we breeze through KYC compliance. By connecting to the largest pool of valid ID databases in Africa, we help businesses authenticate any valid ID in real-time while maintaining strict compliance with industry regulations.
Verified.africa was built with developers and non-techies in mind — allowing anyone to start verifying identities with little or no coding required.
Aella Credit, a Nigerian Fintech company providing instant credit and payment solutions, faced a common problem among businesses: slow and inefficient identity verification, causing constant lags, downtime, backlogs, and errors.
By utilising both the NIN and International Passport details on Verified.africa, Aella Credit verified their customers’ identities in seconds instead of days, delighting them with swift loan payments and minimising the risk of loan defaults.
Distrust among businesses and customers
Trust has become even more crucial as customers actively seek businesses they can rely on. With this trust, the digital economy will grow and retain money.
Verified.africa enables companies to build trust with authentic customers as we help you understand your customers better and make informed decisions using genuine data intelligence.
Bade Adesemewo of Social Lender advises, “Validating a customer is the critical entry point to giving value to that one customer.”. Using our product’s services like Address Verification, you can efficiently conduct background checks on individuals to ensure you give the right service to the right customer.
<Learn how address verification works>
Identity theft and fraud
An accusation of fraud can be the end of the road for your business.
Identity verification helps you assess which users might be at high risk. You can then use this data to create authentication levels based on the risky possibilities of certain transactions. For example, telecom agencies can use our Face Match Engine to verify old and new customers that register for SIM cards, preventing identity theft cases and sim swap fraud.
This is a lifesaver in a world where one negative accusation of fraud from an Instagram account can undo all your hard work
Invest Bamboo is a Brokerage Firm in Africa that gives people intelligent, affordable and accessible options for investing in the United States of America. As a fintech company, Bamboo requires customers to submit a National Identification Number (NIN) and Bank Verification Number (BVN) on signup. These two forms of identification are unique to each Nigerian.
By integrating Verified.africa’s API to their KYC process, Bamboo solved the problem of dual identities, processing over 5,000 signups monthly.
Administrative burden
Having your staff manually request, process and confirm ID documents is a burden.
Back-and-forth communication will be required when verifying identities manually over incorrectly formatted documents, incorrect details or unplanned hindrances.
Instead, using something as simple as a link created directly from the user on your website to an online ID-checking service, the user can upload any information directly and correctly to the service then validation is done instantly.
Save your staff hours, and reap productivity in return!
Case study: First Bank
Verified.africa enables First Bank of Nigeria to facilitate financial inclusion by verifying the identities of Nigerians who want to open bank accounts anywhere, anytime.
Using our NIN and BVN verification service, we made banking more accessible, reducing paperwork and decreasing the number of people queuing physically at the bank for account creation.
Note: The NIN verification service has been replaced with the Virtual NIN, as directed by Nigeria’s official identity agency, NIMC.
<Learn more about VNIN verification>
Run your online business with peace of mind and Protect your customers
Digital trust and fair trade will only be possible with secure and reliable identity verification technology, whether business to business or the consumer.
Verified.africa is proud to be a key enabler of Africa’s digital economy as we empower people and businesses to participate in the economy and access digital services with verified identities. To use verified.africa, sign up on our website for free.
