TechPression

Tag: verification

  • Google announces Blue Checkmark verification 

    Google announces Blue Checkmark verification 

    Gmail users can now access a more trustworthy and secure email platform as a result of a new verification process that has a blue checkmark. 

    This new functionality is designed to assist users in recognising real senders and thwarting phishing efforts carried out by impersonators.

    This endeavour expands upon the Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) function that was initially introduced by Google in 2021. 

    Before an email sender’s brand logo can be used as an avatar, BIMI requires strong authentication to be used by the sender and verification of the brand logo. Users will now notice a blue checkmark indicator next to the names of senders who have included the BIMI feature in their workflow.

    A message will appear when you hover over the blue checkmark, stating that the sender has validated the ownership of their domain and logo that is displayed in their profile photograph. 

    Google believes that by adding this additional layer of authentication, users’ trust in email sources will rise, which will result in a more trustworthy email ecosystem.

    Read also: Google tightens Play Store fraud preventive measures

    Qualifications for the Blue Tick

    The blue checkmark verification process is offered to businesses and organisations that meet Google’s BIMI standard requirements. 

    This includes having a robust authentication as well as a verified logo that is up to snuff with Google’s standards. When they do so, businesses are able to harness the trust their customers have in their brands and deliver a more engaging experience for the people who receive their emails.

    This brand-new capability has already started trickling out to individual Google accounts in addition to Workspace accounts. Users of Gmail should start seeing blue checkmarks next to verified senders in their inboxes over the course of the following weeks.

    It’s important to keep in mind that Google wasn’t the first company to come up with the idea of verification checkmarks. Twitter and Instagram have also introduced such systems in order to cultivate a sense of trust and authenticity among their user bases.

    The blue checkmark verification procedure in Gmail is intended to assist users in distinguishing between legitimate senders and phishing efforts of various kinds. Businesses have the ability to improve their reputation and produce a more secure environment for email communication by adopting BIMI and earning a blue checkmark from the initiative.

    More on the Google Blue Tick

    The presence of the blue checkmark on a Google search result is Google’s way of adding an additional layer of security for its users’ protection against con artists and fraudsters. It will give people more confidence in the communications that they receive, which is absolutely necessary in this day and age of digital communication.

    It assists businesses in improving their discussions with people, so fostering trust and reducing the risk of scams. Because the message is coming from a reliable source, it provides an additional benefit to businesses and assists them in enhancing and increasing engagement.

  • IdentityPass: Nigeria’s Identity Verification Startup, Raises $2.8M Seed

    IdentityPass: Nigeria’s Identity Verification Startup, Raises $2.8M Seed

    Identitypass, a Lagos-based identity verification API, has received $2.8 million in seed funding months after graduating from Y Combinator. The round also comes a few months after the startup raised $360,000 in pre-seed investment last November, bringing its total funding to $3.1 million.

     

    IdentityPass and Its Quest Towards Solving Fraud And Identity Issues in Africa

    As more individuals gain access to the internet for the first time, mobile penetration in Africa rises to around 46%. As a result, the market opportunity for startups, particularly fintechs and e-commerce, has expanded as they aim to develop various solutions to suit the general public’s financial needs. 

    However, the report says African businesses lose $4 billion annually to cybercrime. The global figure for this occurrence stands at $1 trillion. Thus, the need for fintechs and digital businesses in Africa to perform stringent KYC and verification checks on their customers. 

    Identitypass has risen to the challenge of solving fraud and identity issues in Africa, seeing growing demand from that segment. At first, it wasn’t the love for reducing the high fraud rates that birth the company.

     

    Read Also : Coinbase Ventures And FXT Lead A $23M Seed Round For MARA To Develop Africa’s Portal To The Crypto Economy 

     

    According to co-founder and CEO Lanre Ogungbe, the team was initially building a platform that required consumers to use biometrics (face, fingerprints, or voice) and cards to make payments. But while developing the platform, they encountered issues performing verification checks. Hence, the decision to pivot.

    “At the point of when we’re building the payments solution, there was no one in the market that had the kind of infrastructure that we wanted to use. We wanted to build a substitute for authentication. That was it,” said Ogungbe.

    After witnessing a rise in demand for fraud and identity challenges, the team reached out to fintechs to inquire about their solutions. The overall feedback, according to Ogungbe, was a system involving an in-house compliance team and transaction thresholds. To make transactions exceeding the entry for the latter, customers would have to pass further investigative checks.

    Meanwhile, some of these fintechs did not precisely have excellent KYC processes because customers only had to fill in very few data points at their onboarding stages. “We knew it would never work for us,” said Ogungbe, who founded the company with Niyi Adegboye, Ebuka Obi, and Tolu Adetuyi last year. “Today, we have basic authentication using OTPs or a four-pin password, but by starting Identitypass, we wanted to introduce more authentication options into the market.”

     

    Read Also : Egypt’s Paymob Bags $50M Led By Paypay Ventures

     

    Following that, Identitypass sought numerous agencies and authorities around the country to obtain the licenses and certificates required to authorize checks at a wide range of verification points. In January 2020, it began with just one data point. However, 200 active firms in fintech, e-commerce, education, and mobility already connect to 18 data points on the platform to authenticate their consumers’ identities. These companies are based in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Kenya, the United States, and India.

    “The core of our business is making it possible for digital businesses in Africa to easily verify and validate that their customers are who they say they are,” the chief executive said.

    “Before we came into the market, someone could pick another person’s BVN and use that to assess a loan facility,” said the founder explaining why Identitypass takes a lot of data points into cognizance. “But with technologies like ours, we can do this kind of verification to tell that the person submitting the BVN, phone number, or bank details aren’t the owner.”

     

    Leading The Market

    Since its inception, Identitypass has completed over 1 million unique verifications. National IDs, driver licenses, international passports, bank verification numbers (BVN), phone numbers, vehicle plate numbers, debit cards, security watchlists, and tax history are examples of government-approved IDs. The identity and verification platform charges between 10 and 20 cents for each verification, depending on the number of endpoints a company connects to.

    In addition to its APIs, the two-year-old startup just released a SaaS platform. Identitypass, according to Ogungbe, has an advantage over similar participants in the industry, such as fellow YC-batchmate Dojah and veteran firm Smile Identity, because its new product is the software rather than a plug-and-play solution.

    “That makes us different from anyone in the market because today, we’re the only providers of both an API and a SaaS-based solution for verification. To add, we have more data points than most providers in the region. And the way we use data and biometrics for verification, no other player in the market uses it that way.”

    This belief in its ability to be a “market leader” propels the corporation into uncharted territory: international sales. In an interview, the CEO mentioned an incident last month when US-based Mercury banned the accounts of a few African businesses owing to compliance issues. He believes Identitypass can prevent future occurrences by bringing on companies of Mercury’s stature to conduct background checks on African individuals and companies.