FinTech operators in Nigeria have been charged to digitise their Know Your Customer (KYC) and customer onboarding processes in order to drive scale and unlock the potentials of the sub-sector.
This was the summary of discussions at Digital Identity Matters 3.0, where Tech and financial industry experts discussed the theme, ‘How Seamless Customer Onboarding is Transforming FinTech Growth’.
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Digital Identity Matters is a quarterly webinar series organised by VerifyMe Nigeria, a digital identity verification and Know-Your-Customer (eKYC) technology company and Tech Cabal Media.
Panellists at the event included: Co-founder/CEO of VerifyMe Nigeria, Esigie Aguele; Managing Director, Branch International, Dayo Ademola and Founder/CEO of Kuda Bank, Babs Ogundeyi.
Aguele said an efficient on-boarding process must include a KYC infrastructure that allows the organisation to focus on its core business while ensuring seamless on-boarding of customers.
“With a population of 200 million, about 50 million Nigerians have the Bank Verification Number (BVN), which is the ID for the banking sector, 65 million have a National Identity Number and less than10 million have driver’s licences. So, it’s about using these identities to onboard customers where available and plugging into ecosystems that take away the headache of onboarding or knowing who your customer is so that FinTechs can better serve them.” he said.
Speaking on the role of technology, Ogundeyi explained that onboarding in KYC requires continuous iteration as there are always criminals trying to circumvent the process.
He however made known that innovative technology, such as liveness checks, support the onboarding process by ensuring that the person holding the device, which is assumed to be the account opener, is the same image captured in the system “because they have to take and upload a selfie in real-time. So, technology keeps the ecosystem alert.”
