KENYA – Smile Identity, a Lagos, Nigeria, London, UK, Cape Town South Africa and Nairobi, Kenya-based provider of a KYC onboarding and identity verification platform for Africa, raised $20M in Series B funding.
The round, which brought Smile Identity’s total funding to $31M, including $7M raised in their Series A funding round in 2021, was led by Costanoa and Norrsken22, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Two Culture Capital, Valuestream Ventures, Intercept Ventures, Latitude, Future Africa, and 500 Fintech. Lexi Novitske from Norrsken22 will join Smile Identity’s Board as part of the Series B.The company intends to use the funds to expand its product and engineering team, accelerating the development and specialisation of its AI-powered biometrics, document verification, anti-fraud and compliance solutions tailored for African markets.Led by CEO Mark Straub, Smile Identity is Africa’s identity verification, and digital Know Your Customer (KYC) provider. The solution helps companies scale rapidly across Africa by providing digital onboarding and KYC compliance solutions that make it easy to verify the true legal identity of their customers. Its technology is powered by proprietary Machine Learning algorithms designed specifically for African devices, faces and data sources.The company is growing its existing teams in East, West, and Southern Africa and completing its Pan-African reach with plans to enter Francophone and Arab-speaking markets through localised sales and support. In addition, Smile will continue working closely with regulators and ID authorities to build consumer consent standards into software, enforce African data protection laws, and share data on fraud and financial inclusion trends.Since their Series A funding round, Smile Identity has completed 50M KYC checks for hundreds of partners across the African continent, helping them to scale their businesses by mitigating fraud and onboarding new customers seamlessly. The company offers global coverage with its Document Verification product and has added a Business Verification or “Know-Your-Business” (KYB) solution to its offerings. In addition, Smile Identity has expanded into South Africa and Uganda and opened offices in London and Cape Town, demonstrating its commitment to connecting Africans to global opportunities.15/02/202
