Africa-focused KYC, startup, Smile Identity, has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by

Africa-focused venture capital firm Norrsken22. Costanoa Ventures also participated in this funding round while Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, will also be joining the startup's Board.

Smile Identity is a significant player in Africa that provides ID verification and KYC compliance for African faces and identities. This funding is also coming after a $7 million Series A investment in July 2021.

Other participating investors in this round also include existing ones such as ValueStream Ventures, Intercept Ventures, Latitude, Future Africa and 500 Fintech — and new backers like Commerce Ventures, Courtside Ventures and Two Culture Capital.

According to data, the African KYC service and identity verification platform has received more than $30 million from investors since it was launched by Mark Straub and William Bares in 2018.

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The startup also disclosed in a statement that the funding will help to accelerate the development and adoption of its AI-powered identity verification tech, while also ramping up hiring efforts in East, Southern and West Africa with a focus on product and engineering, and expanding into new markets, in Francophone and Arab-speaking African countries.

The company also hopes that its war chest allows it to partner closely with ID authorities and governments to create consumer consent standards and enforce local African data protection laws across the continent.

Speaking about the round, Mark Strub revealed: “The interesting update we have is the Document verification, which analyzes a document’s photo and compares that to users’ provided selfie. And with that product, we can cover all of Africa. So you know, instead of covering 250 million people, we can cover over a billion people. We’re talking about over 230 ID types from more than 100 countries, including all of Africa, the diaspora, much of Europe and North America."