The digital revolution is transforming Africa, with businesses rapidly migrating online and millions of Africans joining the digital space for the first time.
However, a significant hurdle remains the issue of trust and secure online identity verification.
Limited access to basic identity documentation continues to plague many Africans, hindering their ability to participate fully in the digital economy.
For businesses, this translates to a challenge in verifying the legitimacy of potential customers or partners, making them hesitant to engage online.
This is where pawaPass steps in, bridging the trust gap in Africa’s digital landscape. Leveraging facial biometrics and other digital data, pawaPass empowers businesses to verify the identity of users interacting online or remotely confidently.
This fosters a more secure and trustworthy environment for both businesses and users.
The increasing number of Africans coming online creates a burgeoning demand for secure access to services and online accounts.
However, this growth is accompanied by increased online threats, including fraud, deepfakes, and online abuse.
In a chat, Sylvia Brune, the founder and CEO of pawaPass discusses how the startup addresses these challenges by offering an efficient, secure, and user-friendly solution for identity verification.
Tell us about your background and experience as a founder, investor, and product builder for Africa
Sylvia Brune: My journey in Africa’s tech scene has been fueled by a mix of curiosity and my need to solve problems. I visited Africa in 2012 as part of the 88mph fund and accelerator and was able to see how entrepreneurs were leveraging technology to tackle challenges.
Investing is the best education, and being able to be part of something like investing in tech companies very early was a great experience. It really felt like Day 1 for Africa’s startup scene, and in some ways, it still does.
Beyond Nairobi and Cape Town, I was able to push for expansion to Lagos in 2014, and we ended up launching 440NG as a JV in Lagos with Chika Nwobi and L5Labs.
I fell in love with the Nigerian energy and creativity immediately and, at the same time felt somewhat overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges that young entrepreneurs faced there.
Chika was constantly hammering on about “sequencing” with the ten startups we had invested in, and I could see why.
How can you take on the world while paying 1/4 of your meagre startup funding in diesel costs?
I also got a proper crash course in real-world dynamics as I had to manage the conversion of the dilapidated top floor of a 4-star hotel in Ikoyi into a co-working space on a tight schedule.
Thankfully, the hotel was running a 24/7 generator and covering diesel costs, which meant startup founders often fell asleep late at night hunched over their laptops.
It was also the year Ebola broke out, and we were nearly the only people left at the hotel. It happened just as we were to start interviewing the startups, and my friends in Europe thought we were crazy. I got to meet such fun personalities during those sessions.
One example is the late founder of Pass.NG, Samson, was particularly unique. In their pitch, they had estimated that they would have 70% of their market within 5 years and when I asked him why he thought they would reach 70%, he stated “I thought we should leave some for the competition so they don’t feel too bad.” We would go on to invest in them, and they would go on to fight for many years before it folded.
After some years on the investor side, I was itching to get more hands-on involvement, the proverbial fighter in the arena – choosing what problems to solve, creating products, and speaking with customers.
I can confirm that the emotional and physical journey is a great deal more extreme. I can also confirm that it’s 100% worth it.
From investing and creating in Africa and beyond, I’m now at a point where I’ve developed a slightly more patient approach to designing solutions to meet the diverse needs of the African market.
While my time has not been without challenges, I am proud of my achievements and excited to keep pushing solutions that can improve the day-to-day lives of people across the continent.
With pawaPass, my mission is to introduce trust to online experiences through inclusive user verification.
What is pawaPass, and what challenges are you solving?
Sylvia Brune: We address the issue of trust. Despite the increasing use of digital platforms by businesses, many Africans lack basic identity access, limiting their economic opportunities.
It’s simple: if a business can’t verify you are a real human, and not a fraudster, it’s hard to trust you – and that’s where we come in.
pawaPass enables businesses to trust their online or remote interactions by using facial biometrics and other digital data.
With millions of Africans coming online, there’s a growing need to access services and safeguard online accounts.
However, the rise in online fraud, deep fakes, and abuse presents challenges in offering these services efficiently, securely, and in a user-friendly environment.
pawaPass tackles this challenge by ensuring users are real humans and unique within the business’ user base.
By verifying a person’s identity and ensuring they have only one account, businesses can confidently engage with them. In case of abuse or fraud, businesses can block them and prevent them from creating new accounts, all through facial recognition technology.
In a broader context, PawaPass facilitates increased accessibility for all to engage in the digital economy. Individuals would be able to access remote employment, online commerce, and financial services with even the most basic internet-enabled technology.
Our services are active in five African countries: Zambia, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania. Soon, we will announce new projects as we expand across the continent.
As one of the few female CEOs leading organizations in Africa’s tech startup sector, what challenges and opportunities have you encountered in the industry, particularly in building and scaling Pawapass?
Sylvia Brune: The challenge for early-stage startups is building something people are willing to pay for, and generating enough revenue to cover your costs of delivering it. And as Chika Nwobi used to say, “If you need something you go get it. That’s literally your whole job as a founder. You need that deal, make it happen. You need to find a CTO, go find them”. Or something like that.
What specific challenges have you faced so far in the African market? How did you deal with them?
Sylvia Brune: There are some interesting ones, like trying to run secure biometric sessions on browsers that are compressing data to solve the high cost of data problem, so they use proxies and therefore can’t run end-to-end encryption on the camera session.
But at the same time, there’s not enough space on the low-end smartphone so many people don’t download apps.
And managing conversion flows for hundreds of other edge cases. Ultimately it comes down to ensuring the highest amount of security possible without compromising – too much – the user experience, retention, and growth that online businesses need.
Then you combine these technical challenges with low literacy levels and often a skepticism to biometric verification. Addressing these diverse challenges across different regions has taken even more time and careful consideration than expected.
How does Pawapass differentiate itself from other RegTech platforms in the market?
Sylvia Brune: I think we try to focus more on anti-fraud and the uniqueness plus realness of online business users.
There are many platforms that are more focused on traditional identification methods, which we found out early on can inadvertently exclude genuine users while also leaving systems vulnerable to exploitation.
pawaPass emphasizes secure facial biometrics as the foundation of our approach. We enhance the verification process by incorporating supplementary data points, ensuring accuracy and data protection.
We have also undertaken extensive testing and research to select a biometric technology partner to improve the resilience of businesses to sophisticated techniques like deep fakes and masks.
This commitment to security enables us to enhance trust and credibility in combating the pervasive trust deficit between our customers and end-users.
Our innovative approach doesn’t stop at technology; we understand the diverse challenges faced by our users, especially with limited internet access, lower-end smartphones, and low levels of digital literacy.
We are investing significant time and effort into identifying and addressing these unique cases, ensuring our solutions remain accessible and user-friendly across different demographics and regions.
Given the dynamic nature of regulatory requirements, how does Pawapass ensure that its solutions remain relevant and adaptable to changes in the regulatory environment across different African countries?
Sylvia Brune: In Rwanda for instance, we secured a Trust & Corporate Service Provider [TCSP] license from the Rwandan Central Bank after discovering that the regulatory framework had been recently updated and we needed to quickly find a solution to serve a client.
As an added bonus, beyond showing our commitment to upholding rigorous security, governance, and compliance standards, it granted us enhanced authority to safeguard and manage assets on behalf of third parties.
We always want to ensure that we remain at the forefront of providing secure and compliant solutions across diverse African markets.
Ultimately, it’s the businesses we serve who are most exposed to the regulatory frameworks that keep updating and changing.
Our task is to have a solid user verification foundation and make the solution as flexible as possible to ensure that changes can be implemented when needed.
What future developments or expansions do you envision for Pawapass regarding its offerings and market reach within the African tech ecosystem?
Sylvia Brune: Our main goal is to progressively extend our footprint to cover every region across the continent. We envision introducing innovative solutions and scaling our services to address the evolving user verification needs of businesses and individuals.
Additionally, we plan to integrate our user verification and anti-fraud elements with more compliance features tailored to specific industries such as finance, immigration, and employment. By doing so, we aim to offer comprehensive solutions that not only enhance security but also streamline regulatory compliance processes.
In light of the decreasing number of organizations reporting minimum viable cyber resilience, which has declined by 31% since 2022, how does the pawaPass solution contribute to enhancing online compliance and cybersecurity targets positively?
Sylvia Brune: We recognize the importance of accessibility in technology adoption, especially in regions where data costs and internet coverage pose significant barriers.
That’s why our focus extends beyond mere security measures; we constantly work towards a solution that functions as seamlessly as possible across browsers and low-end smartphones, enabling widespread applicability.
Our approach to user verification emphasizes the trade-off I referred to earlier, limiting fraud while not destroying user growth. We allow businesses to conduct lightweight background checks on user activity, intervening only when there are indicators of abnormal behaviour.
Similarly, it is possible to give this power to end-users themselves to safeguard their accounts by choosing to force a biometric face scan for sensitive actions such as password changes or high transaction authorizations.
What advice would you give aspiring professionals hoping to follow in your footsteps?
Sylvia Brune: I asked Kresten Buch once, back in the days, how he always looked chill and stayed level-headed in the midst of absolute mayhem with new crises popping up every day.
He said that he tried to think of it all as a game. In a new game, you are always one mistake away from game over.
Mostly, you lose, but then it asks you if you want to go again, and you tap the yes button to survive longer and start leveling up. And one day you win.
So when the challenges feel overwhelming it helps me to think of that and just keep tapping the ‘One more game’ button.
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