Brandon Wang, is the chief information officer of VerifyMe Nigeria, a digital identity authentication company. In this exclusive interview with Jumoke Lawanson, he talks about the need for a digital identification system in Nigeria, the company’s solution to last mile verification , among other issues. Excerpts.
What is last-mile verification, and why did VerifyMe decide to pioneer this as a tech-enabled service in Nigeria?
Last-mile authentication is the process of ensuring that the identity of an applicant for a social or financial service can be linked to their residential address. It is a fundamental part of the 3-tier Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process in Nigeria. Prosperous nations are built on a foundation of trust, and trust can only be established through authentic identities. Without proper identification for citizens and residents, Nigeria cannot achieve financial, social and political progress. Traditionally, organisations have had to facilitate last-mile verification themselves, diverting resources away from their core business. VerifyMe offers digital identification and verification-as-a-service for the financial sector and other industries. We deliver last-mile authentication through our tech-enabled network of verification agents across Nigeria. Over the last 3 years, we have built Nigeria’s largest ID authentication network and developed the capacity to do tens of thousands of address verifications every week.
What measures can be put in place to ensure trust among last-mile agents to guarantee data security?
VerifyMe has the highest standards for privacy and adheres to all cybersecurity best-practices. Our last-mile verification agents are only given need-to-know information for the execution of verification assignments. All collected data is securely captured and transmitted to our servers located in Nigeria. Additionally, our leading technology allows us to track the 4-D trajectory of our agents to ensure verification requests are carried out at the right time and in the right place.
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What would you say is the biggest challenge to last-mile verification in Nigeria?
Non-standardised addresses. This is a massive problem for businesses in Nigeria. To emphasise this, I will give an example; About two months ago, one of our banking clients requested for 1,500 address verifications to be fulfilled in a week. However, we had to reject 1,000 of those requests due to vague or incomplete addresses supplied by loan applicants. This issue significantly slowed down the onboarding process and translated to a loss of potential revenue for our client and staff-hours for us. Not to mention that over a thousand people were not able to get access to credit in that week. If we consolidate this across the various financial services companies, it adds up to billions of Naira of delayed or, even worse, lost income. Another sector where non-standardised addresses are a big issue is in eCommerce. Thousands of deliveries cannot be fulfilled daily due to imprecise addressing.
How is VerifyMe solving this problem?
When we entered the market, we believed last-mile capacity to be the missing piece of the digital ID problem. However, our experience over the previous three years has shown us that to solve last-mile authentication, we need to first resolve ambiguous addresses. VerifyMe is launching a brand-new service that will facilitate faster and more precise address verification. Using 4-D GIS technology, we improve last-mile agent efficiency by pre-screening addresses based upon cell-tower and GPS positioning in real-time. Additionally, we are working to become more user-inclusive by emphasising personal contributions to the verification process. Our agents will use the improved accuracy to carry out verifications on incomplete or vague addresses. Our new service will also be available to integrate into existing workflows for our customers. A company like Jumia will be able to integrate with our webhook to pinpoint the exact location of non-standard addresses.
What is the future of last-mile authentication in Nigeria?
We believe that Nigeria is close to achieving critical mass, where verifications will be so common, that instead of talking about last-mile authentication, we will be talking about an always-current source of verified data that can be monetised. VerifyMe is already starting down this path with our first-of-its-kind marketplace for current verified data. This marketplace will function in a way similar to the credit scoring system in matured markets. A credit score is always active and up to date because various institutions are requesting for it. Any time a person opens a bank account or makes a sizable purchase, their credit score is updated to the benefit of both the individual and the next organisation that needs to do business with him or her. We see a situation where anytime a person in Nigeria transacts, their digital identity is updated, qualifying them to access more services and more opportunities. Businesses will benefit from this marketplace in at least two ways
1. Cost Savings – due to our high throughput, we have a database of trusted digital IDs that service providers can access at lower rates.
2. Fraud protection – this same database will also capture bad actors and will prevent them from gaining access to financial services and compromising the safety of businesses. Based on our compliance with identity regulation developed by NIMC, all data is valid for only one year. We are working closely with regulators and other ministries, departments and agencies to create this ecosystem and make digital inclusion as seamless as possible.
It is estimated that 75 percent of the Nigerian population is in the informal sector, majority of whom are served by mobile money agents with no means to verify identities of the parties in the transaction. How can this segment be included in the formal system?
We are actively working with government agencies such as NIMC to digitise identities so all people in Nigeria can have access to the formal financial sector and public services. For example, a fisherman in the informal sector would be motivated by economic incentives like grants and loans to expand his business or social incentives like subsidised healthcare and scholarships for his children. VerifyMe has also partnered with microfinance companies such as NIRSAL Bank who is digitising farmers to encourage them towards the formal banking system. With the majority of businesses being in the informal sector, digitising identities is a crucial component to transforming the Nigerian economy by providing growth opportunities.
Nigeria has a population of about 200 million, out of which almost half live in rural areas. What has been the VerifyMe experience within this segment?
At VerifyMe, we have been doing our utmost to ensure financial inclusion for the rural population. An estimated 143.9 million Nigerians are yet to be enrolled in the National Identity Number initiative by NIMC. Considering this, we are addressing this issue from two fronts. First, as a private sector partner to NIMC, we are working with the commission to leverage our expertise to help scale NIN enrolment across the country. Secondly, in our service to our various vendor-partners, we enable contactless account opening and onboarding of customers all across the country. We are partnered with six of the top ten banks in Nigeria and nine of the top 20, resulting in bank accounts and verified identities for tens of thousands of rural Nigerians.
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