Smile Identity, the African provider of digital identity verification solutions, has secured $20 million in Series B funding.
The round was co-led by Costanoa and Norrsken22. Additional new investments came from Commerce Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Two Culture Capital, and Latitude. Existing investors Valuestream Ventures, Intercept Ventures and Future Africa also joined the round. Lexi Novitske from Norrsken22 will also be joining our Board. The latest funding takes Smile Identity’s total funding to over $30 million since inception.
Founded in 2017 by Mark Straub and William Bares, Smile Identity believes anyone should be able to prove their identity easily, anywhere in the world. They have built encryption, authentication, and security solutions and have developed image processing technology from the chip level up.
The startup in a statement announcing the new funding claims that it has doubled its customer base and tripled revenues. As well as completing an estimated 50 million KYC and identity verification checks for hundreds of clients, Smile Identity has integrated to more ID databases than any other KYC provider in Africa and provides compliance and anti-fraud solutions to many of the continent’s champions in banking, lending, payments, remittances, cryptocurrency and the shared economy.
On what Smile Identity will use the new funding for, Mark Straub, the CEO of the startup highlighted three key areas it will focus on including expanding its engineering and Product innovation, international expansion and localisation by building new teams in Francophone and North Africa and long-term commitments to identity ecosystems.
