Nigerian ID Verification company, Youverify, raises $1.5m in investment round led by Orange Digital Ventures

Youverify, a Nigerian startup focused on identity and background verification, has raised $1.5 million in an investment round led by Orange Digital Ventures, the strategic Corporate Venture Fund of the Orange Group.

Co-founded by the company’s CEO, Gbenga Odegbami and launched in 2018, Youverify aims to help companies automate the verification processes of different types of data treated separately today, such as identity, academic background, home address, credit history , facial recognition while respecting the highest standards of regulation and data protection.

Youverify primarily provides this identity verification service to financial and telecommunication service providers in Nigeria, which it claims it has already performed more than 300,000 customer registrations and verifications.

The $1.5 million investment round will help Youverify improve its technology and accelerate business development in Nigeria and the continent.

According to Gbenga Odegbami, “This constitutes a unique opportunity for us to take further our ambition to simplify and secure our client’s internal processes, whether in the recruitment of staff, customer onboarding etc. Our ambition is to be the leading African player in verifying people and companies’ identities by making data protection and security the core of our proposal. ”

“Matters of security and access to financial or telecommunications services should never be at odds with each other. Telecom operators like Orange are at the forefront of these transformational challenges. We are proud to support Youverify, which intends to resolve this triple objective of fostering financial inclusion, strengthening security and preserving user rights over their data,” said Grégoire de Padirac, Investment Manager at ODV.