The technology company will bring its digital onboarding system to the Nigerian public administration, thanks to which retired military personnel will be able to identify themselves easily and securely by means of a simple selfie and a photo of their ID card.
This biometric system, based on a combination of facial recognition and full document capture for character extraction, will also help to combat and prevent possible cases of fraud and identity theft.
FacePhi makes the leap to Africa with its first project for a public administration on this continent. The Spanish technology company, in collaboration with Afrilight Technologies, will be responsible for modernizing the pension collection system for veterans of the Nigerian Armed Forces, facilitating the management of their benefits through a biometric identity verification system.
In this way, the Alicante-based company will play a key role in this pioneering initiative of the Nigerian administration, which will implement a digital onboarding system thanks to which retired military personnel will be able to identify themselves easily and securely. To do so, the user will only have to register from his or her own cell phone, through a selfie and a photo of his or her ID card. These simple gestures will be enough to activate a software that combines facial recognition with the complete capture of the document by optical reading and subsequent extraction of characters, thus making a comparison of the face patterns to verify that the person who has registered to receive their benefit is who they say they are.
“The use of biometric systems to access banking and financial services is becoming more and more common among senior users, as this technology allows access to digital spaces in a comfortable and very intuitive way,” explains Javier Mira, CEO of FacePhi. “Boosting digitalization processes through biometrics has a positive social impact, as it helps to ensure that the elderly are not left behind in the use of certain services, helping to close a digital divide that is especially pronounced on the African continent. We are very pleased to be able to develop this type of project in countries such as Nigeria, where the digital transformation of public administrations is a major challenge that can have a very beneficial impact on millions of citizens,” said the executive.
The project will also have significant advantages for the Nigerian public entity, as it will provide a higher level of protection than other methods of user verification, such as passwords or identification by public officials, helping to combat and prevent possible cases of fraud and identity theft. This commitment to digitalization comes at a time when the African continent is facing the challenge of increasing its connectivity following the impact of Covid-19, while at the same time facing an increase in various forms of cybercrime. According to the Online African organized crime from surface to dark web report by INTERPOL, only 28% of Africans were using the Internet in 2019, which didn´t deter digital crime from doubling between 2017 and 2018, reaching an impact of 6.5 billion dollars.
The implementation of this digital onboarding system will rely on the expertise of the African firm Afrilight Technologies, one of the leading companies in the region in the development of software integrations and technology consulting.
