Prembly is the parent company of Identitypass.

This innovative event centers on Fintech: The Africa Experience, and is designed to present pioneering innovations while helping to mitigate risks emerging from the financial services industry.

With a 71.2% economically active population and a 91% literacy rate according to the World Bank, Namibia offers a strong potential for tech innovation and development. This partnership will help identify opportunities, drive collaboration, and foster innovation toward building a digital identity framework for the country, thus advancing its digital economy at large.

Prembly has established itself as a leading provider of identity verification, compliance and online security solutions across emerging markets, having worked with governments and regulatory bodies in over 40 African countries.

With tailored solutions, the company has advised on policy formulation, compliance, and security needs in various emerging markets.

By leveraging Prembly’s expertise in digital identity solutions, NAMFISA aims to create an inclusive and interoperable comprehensive system that supports innovation while meeting regulatory compliance needs.

 “We are excited to partner with NAMFISA and contribute to developing a digital identity framework for Namibia. This partnership further demonstrates our vision to strengthen innovation and inclusion in Africa, and we are committed to leveraging our expertise and resources to drive this mission forward”, says Niyi Adegboye, Prembly’s co-founder/COO.

The fintech industry in Africa has seen a remarkable surge in growth over the past eight years, as businesses have rapidly embraced new technologies and shifted to digital platforms. To fully capitalize on this dynamic market, it is critical to assess the market restrictions and provide solutions that impact digital identity systems.

“The partnership with Prembly brings expertise in compliance and digital security to the table. We’re  most grateful to have received support from Prembly which aligns with NAMFISA’s mission to regulate and supervise Namibia’s financial sector in a manner that fosters innovation, financial inclusion, and stability., says Kenneth Matomola, CEO,  NAMFISA.

Research revealed that over 129,000 persons were displaced in 320 local government areas across 35 states, 68 persons killed and properties/farmlands were destroyed. In 2021, over 100,000 persons were affected, while there have been over 600 deaths, 1,546 injuries and over 1.3 million displacements due to flooding across Nigeria this year.

In a bid to relieve the pain felt by a lot, IdentityPass, a Nigerian verification service provider tackling the issue of cybercrime and other related issues has pledged to contribute N4 million to assist flood victims. 

According to the company, “In light of recent flooding incidents in Nigeria, ldentityPass will contribute 4 million Naira to relief efforts to assist flood victims.”

IdentityPass provides solutions to sectors including fintech, insurance, mobility, e-commerce, HR management, crypto spaces, and others. The company ensures that brands are secured from the incidence of ID thefts, helping them improve their customer onboarding — sign up and verification — processes. 

IdentityPass processes thousands of verification calls daily for businesses in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. With continuous expansion plans to other African countries, the company has built a team determined to keep developing more innovative ways to ensure that digital verifications are seamless, accessible, and secure.

In relation to the flooding issue, the company stated further: “In recent weeks, flooding has forced hundreds of thousands of families and individuals to flee their homes. As a result many people are unable to feed themselves properly and are deprived of adequate sleep and living conditions. Our thoughts are with all of the victims.

Beyond assisting affected IdentityPass employees, we recognise that we are part of a larger community and that the least you can do is lend a helping hand. We are currently inviting registered humanitarian organisations that assist victims to apply for this relief assistance in the coming days. We have committed to providing one million naira to each of these organisations right away. 

A two-person team (our colleagues Anthony and Samuel) will immediately vet and distribute the funds to the organisations that applied. Given the urgency of the situation, we hope to complete this process within a week.”

Organizations currently working in IDP camps of people affected were advised to apply here.

Supernova Challenge is the biggest pitch competition in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, where Startups have opportunity to become the next unicorn, with upto $200,000 in cash prizes up for grabs.

As officially announced by North Star Dubai on their website, the Startups are; IdentityPass, 9JaCodeKids Academy, Floews, Medtech, Paddycover, Pricepally, LiveBic, Technyon Technologies, and Wellness Health Technologies.

Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami), the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, while inaugurating the Nigerian pavilion, commended the Startups that have so far scaled the competition’s preliminary stages, and expressed confidence in the ability of the team to progress to the finals and hopefully clinch the ultimate prize. 

Prof. Pantami said, “Each and every year, Nigeria has been attending the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition GITEX because of its enormous benefits; these benefits are many, critical among them is attracting foreign direct investment”.

Accompanied by the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, The Executive Vice-chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, the Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission, (NIMC), Engr Aliyu Aziz and the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Backbone, Prof. Muhammed Bello Abubakar as well as some Nigerian private ICT entrepreneurs, the Minister expressed delight in the highest number of startups at the 2022 GITEX.

“We have recorded significant milestones and great accomplishments in our bid to drive Nigeria’s economy digitally and our modest successes are verifiable”.

According to Professor Pantami, the federal government, in the last three years launched several programmes, policies and initiatives that are entrenching the trust between the tech ecosystem and the government towards strengthening the Nigerian digital economy sector.

Kashifu Inuwa, the Director-General of NITDA also shared same optimism with the Minister as he noted that the Nigerian team will ace the competition and once again place the country on the global map.

Inuwa urged the tech innovators to ensure they also learn, unlearn and relearn by participating in other sideline events and conferences in order to build the necessary networks to add value to their craft.

GITEX Global 2022 is a meeting point for technology professionals and enthusiasts. The event is a thrust for the Global Startup Movement attracting world’s biggest technology mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists.

Nigerian startups are showcasing their innovative ideas to the world, interacting with other startups from different parts of Asia, Africa and Europe; luring investors to come to Nigeria and invest money in the country’s fast growing Digital economy.

The new brand and visual identity will incorporate various products, including its flagship ID verification solution, Identitypass.

The change represents the company’s recent growth and commitment to providing a more robust infrastructure for compliance and security across Africa and beyond.

Lanre Ogunbe, CEO and co-founder at Prembly (parent brand of IdentityPass), commented, “Our new brand identity mirrors our global ambitions and the mission of making the Internet safe for everyone. We will continue to innovate in ways that meet clients’ needs and help them seamlessly adapt to industry trends and market changes.”

Mainline Digitech was founded in 2019 to create better online experiences for Africans by providing businesses with top-notch compliance and KYC verification infrastructure. It launched Identitypass in 2020 as its maiden product and has a portfolio of nearly four hundred supported companies.

The product offers innovative solutions, including data verification across five African countries, biometrics tools such as facial recognition technology, and document verification across over 30+ African countries and other regions like Europe.

The company will continue to offer these top-notch solutions and add new products under the umbrella of Prembly.

The new Prembly website showcases a fresh visual identity and new product offerings such as Identity Radar for fraud prevention and transaction monitoring; and Identity Form, a simple data form to collect pre-verified information securely.

Visitors will also be presented with a rich client list that includes some of Africa’s leading brands such as Polaris Bank, Kuda Bank, VFD Group, ChipperCash, TeamApt, Carbon, Bundle Africa, CredPal, Fair Money, and Spleet.

“We are excited about reaching more businesses across Africa and worldwide. With our new products for security (IdentityRadar) and business operations (Identity Form), we’re making the overall brand more robust and ready to serve businesses in an increasingly digital world,” said Adeboye Oyeniyi, COO and Co-founder at Prembly.

More about Prembly 

Prembly is a leading global technology company that provides compliance and security services. It powers the infrastructure that builds trust online between businesses and their customers and aims to make the internet safe for everyone. Prembly’s maiden product Identitypass, a leading KYC/compliance solution, was launched in 2020 and is Y Combinator-backed.

Prembly currently serves hundreds of brands in fintech, insurance, mobility, e-commerce, HR management, crypto, and many other sectors.

• IdentityPass focuses majorly on KYC, security and authentication
• We have a very experienced and dedicated team focused on what we are building, the future and what we are selling out
• We understood the needs of the market and moulded our product to address those needs, not just following the pattern at which many people in the market were following
• We were not just heavily investing in engineering and technology alone
• Having good revenue and being funded by your customers is the most interesting and sustainable way of raising fund
• Do not joke with laws and regulations, there are so many ways that you can go around it but don’t go off the law
• You can partner with other players already in the market that already has what you want, work with them until you’re able to fly off yourself

What is a business without adequate digital security? It could crumble within the twinkle of an eye. 

For this reason, innovators are on the go to ensure the steady growth of big and small businesses, building infrastructure to ensure adequate cybersecurity and deliberating unique ways to make the society better.

Lanre Ogungbe, the Co-Founder of one of such companies, IdentityPass, expatiates the company’s firm standing in making a huge impact within a short period of launch. 

From the initial state before delving into the business, to managing and being able to retain the team distinctly, and all there has been to get to this point with tremendous growth plan, Ogungbe takes us on a journey.

When anyone hears IdentityPass, we know it has to do with identity verification; but can you tell us what aspects exactly IdentityPass focuses on?

IdentityPass focuses majorly on KYC, security and authentication. It is a very wide spectrum, so we do not do enrollment or data ID creation. What we do is majorly use the enrolled database, either from government-approved, public or private databases to authenticate, verify and facilitate transactions.

IdentityPass was founded just last year, but your impact has been commendable. How have you been able to pull this off?

I believe it is heavily based on the team. We have a very experienced and dedicated team focused on what we are building, the future and what we are selling out.

Secondly, it is based on the fact that we were humble enough to understand the needs of the market before we quickly got in. We moulded our product to address those needs and not just follow the pattern at which many people in the market were following.

It was quite easy for us to help them out, get them on board as our customers and start serving them from the get-go that we launched. 

The third is also related to the team. From the kickoff, we knew the structure we needed to have in place so we were not just heavily investing in engineering and technology alone, we were also more interested in ensuring that the business team is really good, the sales team is solid, customer retention strategies are in place, tracking all our metrics on a daily basis, ensuring that necessary steps are taken when there are red flags, even before customers get to know, ensuring they are not affected. 

Unique selling point

From day one when we went into the market we ensured that we had unique selling points. Every single day that we keep growing the market, we see that we are building more unique selling points and more ways in which we are serving the customers.

But we are not heavily focused on just being different, but solving customers problems the way they want it to be solved. Because we do this, it naturally creates that differentiation factor between us and other players in the market.

Our uniqueness ranges from we being the widest data provider to having multiple products that others do not have, to the stability of our products, the custom APIs that we have built any many more.

What were the challenges you faced at the beginning and what are the ones you’re faced with now?

There are multiple challenges, from ensuring that our system is stable enough to grow as fast as our customers are growing. We serve high level customers from banks to startups and other businesses. This comes with us having to grow our infrastructure and grow as fast as possible for us to hold this level of pool that we get from these customers. 

With that naturally comes some of the challenges around stability of products to ensuring we work more hours.

Although, the structure that we built from scrap helped us not to have as much challenges as most businesses do, including loss of critical team members. We have been able to manage our team so well and retain a good number of them.

While we value our customers, we also heavily value the people that work with IdentityPass and we try as much as we can to show this to them.

The number of layoffs in companies has been increasing recently and this is blamed on the economic downturn. How has IdentityPass scaled through?

First of all, we recently raised funds even before the economic downturn hit heavily, that was when it was about kicking off. We were lucky enough to have raised at the right time.

But then, I feel if you just raised funds and you’re laying off staff saying it’s because of the economic downturn, then maybe you did not do your risk aversion analysis properly; in business you want to prepare for the worse case scenarios and worse and best times. The economy will not 100% be good or bad every single time.

For IdentityPass, we’ve just been able to manage our team properly and in addition to the initial funds raised, we are also heavily funded by our customers. Our revenues are growing, the numbers are heating up and when you have good revenue and are funded by your customers, that’s the most interesting and sustainable way of raising fund. 

So because we have positioned the company from the get-on, to rely more on customers’ revenue, we have been heavily stable.

How have you been able to resolve these challenges, making sure it doesn’t surface again?

The fact that we have a very fantastic team who understands the situation we are in, where we are and where we need to get to, a team who requires less supervision to do their jobs and all I have to do is ensure that things are done properly, resources are enough on ground to execute every single time.

How were you able to pull a team of innovators together?

I don’t have the hack to that but I think one thing that really contributed is the fact that I’ve been able retain good friend from some of them. For instance, I met some of my co-founders in the university and one while I was working and we have been able to maintain a good relationship.

It started from being friends before any other thing and this is the biggest factor while others are secondary.

Also you need to be able to create excitement, communicate what the future looks like for the business to them, giving them a little bit of ownership and also being intentional about their needs, they are not just building this future for the co-founders but for themselves too.

Any other we practice in IdentityPass that has helped us retain our team is transparency. People know what the numbers are. We are not the kind of team where the engineers do not know what the sales look like or what the next growth pattern is; every single person in the team knows all important information, business metrics business members are targeting. We are all involved in making decisions, we do not impose.

Once you’re leading a team and you need them to excel, there are particular traits you just need to learn, you need to do away with unhealthy habits. Consider that they are human beings and be intentional about making things work. For instance, if you can’t control yourself when having a one-on-one with a team member, maybe you get upset easily, then let a co-founder always be present in your meetings so they can step in when such situations come up.

How has it been navigating through business laws and regulations?

From day one, we ensured we had a full legal team whose responsibility was to ensure we meet all our legal requirements every single that.

Again, when we raised our pre-seed fund, we used it to finance so many compliance activities. There are different requirements for the sector that you are operating and you can’t joke with it, there are so many ways that you can go around it but don’t go off the law.

Sometimes, the issue could be that these regulations are really expensive for you to kick off as a startup, that’s where partnership comes in.

You can partner with other players already in the market that already has what you want, work with them until you’re able to fly off yourself.

What traction have you made so far and what are your expansion plans?

Since a year and a half that we launched, we have been able to process over 1.5 million unique verification on a monthly basis, we serve over 400 business who trust us to secure their activities, we have been able to expand our data points in and outside Nigeria. We cover up to 35 different countries already and have raised $3.3 million.

We are really heavy in the west African side, specifically Nigeria, which is currently our biggest market. We serve companies and businesses from different parts of the world, from US to Canada, U.K., Ukraine, India and other countries with companies that have African users.

Other than that, our goal is to keep making it possible for businesses in a particular region to easily move to other regions and be compliant. Our goal is also to keep expanding our data points, which is currently the widest in the space.

In terms of expansion, we are heavily looking at the most advanced economies in the continent first, including Egypt, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, and Kenya. Although, we already verify customers in these countries, just like Facebook which is headquartered in San Francisco, but is used globally, that’s how we operate.

With IdentityPass latest funding, the company is launching a new parent brand next week that would house most of the its products; IdentityPass and other KYC, as well as Security products will be under this brand. Fingers crossed.

Identitypass plans to expand its existing infrastructure, roll out new verticals around compliance, security and data collection, spread its reach into new African countries and employ more innovative minds.

The round, which comes a few months after Identitypass raised $360,000 in pre-seed investment, bringing its total funding to $3.1 million, also includes investors such as Y Combinator, Soma Capital, True Capital Fund and Sherwani Capital.

Identitypass affirms to have processed over 1 million distinct verifications since launch, with government-approved IDs, such as national IDs, driver licenses, international passports, bank verification numbers (BVN), phone numbers, vehicle plate numbers, debit cards, security watchlists and tax history included in its offerings. 

Depending on the number of endpoints a business connects to, the identity and verification platform charges between 10 cents to 20 cents on every verification it executes. 

Its products enable clientele to verify, gain deeper insights about users and businesses, detect as well as prevent fraud. Users can easily integrate data searches to retrieve contact or user data and are allowed to personalize web pages with contact or visitor information when they implement Identitypass’ data search on their website/application.

Businesses from across the fintech, e-commerce, education, mobility and other sectors leverage the platform and are spread in countries such as Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Kenya, the United States and India.

Founded by Lanre Ogungbe, Niyi Adegboye and Ebuka Obi, the two-year-old launched a SaaS platform in addition to its APIs. The software was built to enhance Identitypass’ growth scale and excel among its competitors in the market.