Prove your address Here is another brilliant example of a sof | Tech for Good

Prove your address

Here is another brilliant example of a software tech solution to a painful problem. More than 4 billion people globally don’t have a formal physical address, and it costs the world’s economy over $200 billion yearly. Getting delivery, registering a sim card, opening a bank account, getting the job - these are just a few examples of unresolved issues faced by people who don’t have a physical address included in the global address system.

Timbo Drayson was part of the team that launched Google Maps across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. While working in Nigeria, he experienced firsthand the lack of physical address problem. He realized that this was a huge issue, not just for every Nigerian but also for half the world. So, in 2014, he founded OkHi, an innovative addressing startup tackling these challenges in Nigeria with its technology.

Consumers go to OkHi’s website and create addresses by dropping a pin on their map with a virtual representation of their street. OkHi collects this address but uses location data from the consumer’s phone to actively check how long the phone spends at the address that the consumer saved. After a while, OkHi builds up a profile using its “AI-powered verification engine” to determine if the consumer resides at that address or not.

At the starting point, OkHi is building for the financial service sector. Their service integrates into a mobile banking or fintech app and enables them to digitally collect the accurate addresses of their customers, verify them, and onboard their clients. The company claims a product pilot showing that its address verification product is 30% more accurate, 4x faster, and 50% cheaper than the industry standard of sending a physical agent to a customer’s door.

OkHi charges its clients on a per transaction basis. So every time a business successfully verifies a customer’s address, it charges ~$1. OkHi claims to have “hundreds of thousands” of users.

Article on TechCrunch
OkHi website

#AI #software #identity