Kenya's Smile Identity raises $20M to expand across Africa
Smile Identity, a Kenyan identity verification platform, has secured $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Norrsken22 and Costanoa Ventures.
Smile Identity focuses on identity verification and KYC compliance and uses a suite of products to help clients avoid fraud and onboard customers efficiently.
These include identity verification, document verification, user onboarding, anti-fraud checks, and liveness checks, among others. The platform uses biometric deduplication, whereby customers sign up to the platform and take a selfie with their ID to facilitate identity checks.
Smile Identity has secured over $30 million in investment since launching in 2018. The company's growth has been driven by rising demand in the fintech sector, which has resulted in the need for better KYC and identity verification services across Africa.
The KYC verification upstart, which has since doubled its client base since 2021 and now serves over 100 businesses in banking, fintech, education, agriculture, and e-commerce, also claims to perform between 2 to 2.5 million monthly identity checks.
The company has also expanded its Business Verification (KYB) solution, which provides 30 detailed business lookups, and tripled its revenues in the past year.
The funding round will help Smile Identity expand further into new markets and create consumer consent standards and enforce African data protection laws.
