Youverify Raises $1.5m in Seed Round to Automate Service

• Youverify Raises $1.5m in Seed Round to Automate Service

Youverify, a Nigerian based startup that focuses on the identity of customers, just raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round to automate its technology and improve business development in the country.

Orange Digital Ventures Africa (ODV) and Loftyinc Afropreneurs Fund, an early-stage investment fund led the fundraising.

In a statement released by the company, the fund will help the company automate verification processes of financial services companies and mobile operators as most of the data are handled differently. These data, now treated separately, include academic background, home address, credit history and facial recognition.

The startups said it has done more than 300,000 customer registrations and verification since it first launched in 2018. The company, therefore, said it is now working on expanding its operations to other African nations following the success of the recent fundraising.

“This constitutes a unique opportunity for us to take further our ambition to simplify and secure our client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff, or customer onboarding. Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal,” Gbenga Odegbami, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Youverify, stated.

Gbenga Odegbami Pitching Youverify to an audience at #EV2018

“Matters of security and access to financial or telecommunications services should never be at odds with each other. Telecom operators like Orange are at the forefront of these transformational challenges. We are proud to support Youverify, which intends to resolve this triple objective of fostering financial inclusion, strengthening security and preserving user rights over their data,” Grégoire de Padirac, investment manager at ODV said.

Also, the Managing Partner of Loftyinc, Idris Bello, added that  “he investment fits into our thesis of backing strong local founding teams with a bias towards execution, leveraging technology in solving key problems across Africa’s large markets.  We have worked closely with Gbenga and his team over the past year and are excited to joined ODV and others on this journey.”