Y combinator backed Tanzanian startup NALA Money said it will use Estonian identity verification provider Veriff to secure access to its services via reliable and inclusive identity verification.
Building on the success of their personal finance app, which is used by over 250,000 users across Tanzania, NALA’s new service is tailored to the needs of the African diaspora. To fulfil their mission of creating economic opportunity, NALA plans to address the hidden barriers that prevent the African community from accessing traditional financial services safely and seamlessly.
“Over 70% of remittances sent to Africa are still sent in cash, but over 85% of financial institutions now have a digital presence,” said NALA’s CEO Benjamin Fernandes.
“We want to tackle the pain points which limit access to digital finance tools for the African community in the UK. This is especially important as society shifts to operating ‘digital first’ with more online transactions taking place than ever before. It’s exciting and reassuring to see the proactive steps Veriff is taking to build a more inclusive verification process. It was one of the things that really stood out for us when choosing a KYC partner,” Fernandes said in a statement.
Veriff can verify over 9,000 government-issued IDs from more than 190 countries, including over 50 countries from Africa.
“This internal knowhow gives us greater visibility and control to tackle identity verification issues at a variety of levels. We also use a diversified dataset to train our models, and our face comparison accuracy is the same for any ethnicity or document origin,” said Veriff’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer Janer Gorohhov.
