South African startup iiDENTIFii is on a mission to enable financial inclusion and safeguard businesses and their customers from the financial and emotional trauma caused by identity theft.
Founded five years ago by Gur Geva, Lance Fanaroff, Murray Collyer, and Marco Wagener, iiDENTIFii has developed advanced face authentication technology that safely authenticates users via their cell phones or PCs within seconds.
“We envision a safer world where everybody, everywhere and on any device, has a digitally authenticated face and a name,” Geva, the startup’s CEO, told Disrupt Africa.
“Our unique face biometrics platform verifies an individual’s digital identity and authenticates their physical presence in an online world.”
This approach has proven so effective in the fight against financial crime, that four of South Africa’s tier-one banks have partnered with iiDENTIFii to secure digital identity verification in their businesses. The startup raised US$15 million in growth capital in growth capital last year, and recently expanded to Zambia in partnership with the country’s biggest bank, Zanaco.
“Update of our solution has proven the need for biometric identity solutions on the continent. Our platform has millions of active users and hundreds of millions of identity transactions are processed by iiDENTIFii presently,” said Geva.
Zambia is just the first point of expansion for iiDENTIFii, he said.
“iiDENTIFii is rolling out across 20 countries following increased demand from both new and existing clients who require a trusted identity verification partner in various jurisdictions.
We have integrated with most of the largest South African banks who have expanded throughout Africa and have a wide footprint on the continent. It makes it easier for us to echo their expansions,” said Geva.
Meanwhile, partnerships with Microsoft, KPMG, BCX, and Endeavor offer opportunities to further increase iiDENTIFii’s footprint in Africa.
“Our investors are enabling opportunities in the banking, financial and health sectors as well as public sector projects,” Geva said.
“As with many high-growth startups, one of the core challenges has been to scale and empower our team fast and efficiently to meet exponential demand. Thankfully, we built the business from a strong technological foundation that was fully equipped to scale at pace. We focused our priority on assembling a capable and powerful team that could grow and run the business effectively – and honour and cherish that team as our most valuable asset.”
