Youverify Secures $2.5 Million Investment from Elm to Ramp Up Anti-Money Laundering Solutions

Youverify, a leading Nigerian provider of identity verification and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions for financial institutions and startups, has announced a significant investment of $2.5 million from Elm, a specialist in offering digital solutions to both public and private institutions in Saudi Arabia. This pre-Series A funding round also entails a strategic partnership aimed at enhancing Youverify’s AML compliance capabilities, strengthening global risk intelligence, and facilitating the expansion of its product offerings into new markets.

Since its inception in 2018 by founder and CEO Gbenga Odegbami, Youverify has rapidly expanded its real-time business verification coverage to encompass 145 jurisdictions across 48 countries. Additionally, the platform now offers coverage for real-time individual verification, including credit history and national identity numbers, in 46 countries. Odegbami highlighted that the company surpassed its initial objectives set during its seed extension round in 2022, which aimed to expand coverage across 30 African countries.

Despite its commendable growth, Youverify currently serves commercial customers in only 12 countries. However, the platform has experienced a substantial increase in activity, processing 4 million monthly applications for over 3,500 businesses with 800 active clients. This marks a significant escalation from the 400 businesses and 5 million application processes recorded in 2022. Furthermore, the platform’s capacity to verify IDs has expanded from 400 million to 5 billion people, encompassing 600 million businesses across diverse industries such as gaming, travel, healthcare, and telecommunications.

Odegbami emphasized the uniqueness of Youverify’s approach, stating, “Individuals and businesses can verify their identity, registration status, and ownership using their government data through Youverify. This is not the generic OCR-based KYC, which uses image recognition to validate the ID presented to it.” He further elaborated on the company’s anti-money laundering and risk classification product, designed to address industry-specific challenges by determining AML and financial risk exposure using reliable data sources such as government sanctions, watchlists, and sentiment data from global news outlets.

The collaboration between Youverify and Elm reflects a growing emphasis on regulatory compliance and risk management within the financial services sector, particularly in light of the surge in digital transactions across Africa. Reports project digital payments totaling $116 billion this year, underscoring the need for robust identity verification and fraud prevention measures. This trend has fueled the demand for regulatory technologies (regtech) to enhance AML and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, positioning Youverify at the forefront of the industry.

Fahad bin Issa Ibrahim Al-Shathry, VP of Elm Investment, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership, stating, “We are excited to partner with Youverify, a company that shares our vision for leveraging technology to solve critical challenges faced by businesses today.” He emphasized Elm’s dedication to investing in emerging technology ecosystems globally to drive efficiency, security, and trust, underscoring the significance of collaborative efforts in advancing regulatory compliance and risk management practices.