From lending to remittances, digital banking to cryptocurrency trading, African businesses and platforms have experienced a surge in demand on the continent and from the diaspora alike, reinforcing the need for trust in a digital-first environment.
Now, platforms that run Know Your Customer (“KYC”) checks with Smile Identity can verify documents to onboard their customers. Document Verification confirms the authenticity of over 140 ID documents across 100 countries in Africa, Europe and North America, and leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to read the KYC information on the document itself. This offers a frictionless experience for users who can simply snap a selfie and photo of their document to prove their identity online; Smile Identity takes care of the rest.
“We are excited about Document Verification. It promises to help us with regulatory changes in Africa, like supporting the new Ghana Card. It’s great to know that Smile Identity’s coverage extends to all of Africa,” said Kay Sulyman, Product Manager for Compliance at global remittance provider Chipper Cash.
Salami Abolore, CEO of Riby, a digital platform offering financial services to cooperatives and trade groups in Africa, agrees: “With Document Verification, we can now verify national IDs, passports, and more. Smile Identity helps us onboard individual and small business users quickly, allowing us to focus on getting them the financial services they need to thrive.”
A core feature of Document Verification is the use of SmartSelfie™, Smile Identity’s proprietary facial verification technology, which compares a user-submitted selfie to the image on the document. SmartSelfie™ is a debiased biometric solution for face detection, matching and liveness confirmation that has a 99.9% accuracy rate on African faces. This renders Document Verification one of the most secure offerings of its kind, helping businesses and platforms combat fraud and promote trust.
Document Verification complements Smile Identity’s core products that run KYC on the basis of an ID number, rather than a document scan. Document Verification helps businesses retain a record of the IDs they checked, a regulatory requirement in key countries.
By giving businesses more options across continents to conduct their KYC process in a secure and compliant manner, Smile Identity is contributing to growth in trade and remittance corridors between Africa, Europe and North America. Smile Identity fosters trust and positive user experiences, which strengthens the African digital economy as a whole while meeting customer, business and regulatory needs.
