Youverify has secured a $1 million seed extension, in a round co-led by Orange Ventures and Lofty Inc
Youverify has secured a $1 million seed extension, in a round co-led by Orange Ventures and Lofty Inc. Octerra Capital, Plug & Play Venture, Syntax Ventures, HTTP Investors, Afer Group and Fronesyz Capital also participated in the round.
Adding to the $1.5 million that was initially raised by the startup in 2020, Youverify now raised a total of $2.5 million.
Founded in 2018, Youverify enables African banks and startups to automate Know Your Customer (KYC) and other compliance procedures. With this latest investment, the startup will develop new automated compliance products for the gaming, travel, healthcare and telecommunications industries.
"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," Gbenga Odegbami, Youverify's CEO and co-Founder.
Fintech startups and financial service institutions are subject to strict regulations including Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF) in their countries of operations. "The number of financial service companies and platforms that are embedding financial services into their products will continue to grow in sub-Saharan Africa," Gregoire de Padirac, Orange Ventures Principal. "All those companies will need to onboard customers and go through KYC, AML processes using a flexible solution such as Youverify."
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Youverify will expand into new markets and industries in the coming months with the ambition to cover 30 countries, increasing the number of IDs it can verify from 400 million to 2 billion IDs. Recently expanded into Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. The startup has grown by 300% YoY due to strong demand for its KYC products. In the last 24 months, Youverify’s revenue and applications processes have grown by more than 1,000% from 14 customers to more than 400 banks and high-growth startups.
In the same period, the startup processed more than 5 million applications that helped its customers hire talent, sell financial products, and remotely onboard ride-hailing drivers. YouID, YouVerify's digital identity platform also added more than 500,000 users with 600 service providers on its marketplace waitlist across the continent.
"We have seen the huge potential in the fragmented regulatory tech (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," Odegbami added.
This year, transactions worth $116 billion will be made through digital payment channels, requiring stringent measures to prevent identity theft and fraud. As fintech continues to grow in Africa, fintech companies will also face greater scrutiny from regulators.
With these strong tailwinds, the global regulatory tech (regtech) market is expected to grow to $31 billion within the next 5 years with large enterprises dominating the market by over 60%. In Africa, regtech will become a $1.2B market and Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt will constitute 80% of the market.
Youverify’s proprietary technology, the Youverify OS (YVOS), provides a single platform for automating due diligence. YVOS combines risk and compliance management with Youverify’s core identity verification platform to provide fintech companies with a comprehensive and enterprise-grade compliance solution. With Youverify’s vFORM, a low and no-code tool, businesses can create a custom process for onboarding new customers using a drag and drop builder.
