Lagos- and San Francisco-based identity verification company, Youverify has secured a $1 million seed extension round.
The extension round, which boosted Youverify’s total fund raised to $2.5 million, was led by Orange Ventures and LoftyInc Capital, and also received participation from Octerra Capital, Plug & Play Venture, Syntax Ventures, HTTP Investors, Afer Group and Fronesyz Capital.
On a mission to reduce the rate of fraud and compliance difficulties in Nigeria and Africa at large, Youverify is leveraging innovation to mitigate the circumstance and make KYC process simpler.
The startup was founded in Nigeria by Gbenga Odegbami, 2018, with its first service provision being an API for address and identity verification to several financial institutions. So far, it has included more KYC products and expanded into new markets such as Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.
Youverify plans to enhance its services and expand its footprint across 30 countries, majorly in the southern, eastern and francophone parts of Africa. It also seeks to increase the number of IDs it can verify, from 400 million to 2 billion, and develop new automated compliance products for the gaming, travel, healthcare and telecommunications industries.
Youverify affirms that its customer base has increased by 300% to serve more than 400 banks and high-growth startups this year. The company’s application processes have also grown by over 1,000% in the last 24 months, to more than 5 million applications that have helped its clients hire talent, sell financial products, and remotely onboard ride-hailing drivers.
The YouID digital identity platform by Youverify added more than 500,000 users, with 600 service providers on its marketplace waitlist across the continent and according to the company, its Lagos-based identity verification company crossed an ARR of over $1 million last year.
