Seamfix, an established identity solutions enterprise with a 17-year history, has successfully secured a $4.5 million investment from Alitheia IDF. This marks the first time the company has received funding from an institutional investor. The capital infusion is aimed at supporting Seamfix’s strategic expansion beyond the borders of Nigeria into other African markets.
Chimezie Emewulu, who co-founded Seamfix and serves as its CEO, shared the motivation behind seeking this funding. He explained that the company’s revenue growth, when measured in dollars, has been negatively affected by the volatility of the Nigerian naira. The naira has experienced significant devaluation, particularly under the Tinubu administration, which has led to a decrease in the dollar value of the company’s earnings. “From a naira perspective, we see that we are growing year over year but from a dollar perspective, we’re going backwards,” Emewulu stated.
To counteract this and to generate more foreign exchange earnings, Seamfix has made a deliberate decision to venture into more stable African economies, with plans to establish a presence in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.
Seamfix specializes in creating digital identities and verification systems for large organizations and government bodies across Africa. Additionally, the company offers transaction accreditation solutions to its clients. Seamfix has already established operations in Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia, and benefits from its partnership with the MTN group to extend its identity solutions to countries where the telecommunications giant operates.
The challenge of digital identity is acute in Africa, where an estimated 542 million people lack identity cards. Addressing this identity gap could potentially boost GDP growth by up to 7%, but the endeavor is expected to cost around $6 billion.
Throughout its history, Seamfix has developed identity management solutions for a variety of clients, including Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), telecommunications companies like MTN, Glo, Airtel, and financial institutions such as United Bank for Africa, Interswitch, and Union Bank. Its collaboration with NIMC has been instrumental in helping over 100 million Nigerians obtain national identification numbers, and it has supported telecom operators in registering 200 million customers in line with regulatory requirements.
Seamfix generates revenue through several streams: selling its identity solution to organizations, charging for identity verifications, offering annual licenses to access its identity database, and billing for API calls. Emewulu revealed to TechCabal that the company has processed over 500 million identities to date.
The inception of Seamfix can be traced back to the partnership between Chimezie Emewulu and Chibuzor Onwurah, former classmates with a shared vision to ‘seamlessly fix’ technological challenges. Initially, Seamfix focused on creating custom products that digitized organizational workflows but pivoted to concentrate on identity management solutions in 2015.
This pivot was inspired by a client project that involved developing an online exam-taking system for university students. The project highlighted the identity verification issue when cases of student impersonation were discovered. To combat this, Seamfix implemented a biometric system that captured photos and fingerprints, ensuring that any repeat appearances by the same individual could be detected and verified. The success of this identity verification solution led to a partnership with 9 Mobile for customer registration.
Seamfix’s significant breakthrough came in 2015 when it assisted MTN Nigeria in reducing a hefty $5.2 billion fine to $1.7 billion by enhancing the telecom company’s customer registration process to meet regulatory standards, thereby achieving substantial market penetration with its solution.
