Trust, in an Age of Uncertainty

It didn’t start with Brexit, or with Trump, or with Covid-19.
At some point in the last decade we stopped believing in each other.

A (slim) majority of people no longer saw themselves as part of a global community, but instead as merely individuals, and in few places, nationalists. Now humanity faces a novel virus that does not care about borders, or race or political party.

Maybe this is what it takes for us to remember what it means to be human.
To remember that we all share the same fate, the same hopes for our children, the same dreams for our future.

If fear and face-saving are what got us to this point, science and technology fueled by entrepreneurial energy are what can get us out.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the scientists and healthcare workers who are working overtime right now to keep us safe and discover a vaccine.

To do our part, Smile Identity is making ALL our services FREE for ALL healthcare and telemedicine providers until September 1st.

While the healthcare heroes do their work, and while we ask our families and colleagues to wash hands and work from home, for those of us in leadership roles, it’s time to start building organizations that are “anti-fragile.”

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty...Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

Entrepreneurs across Africa have always creatively dealt with risk, as they are no strangers to uncertainty. But more recently, a wave of companies has been fully embracing the scalable and flexible nature of mobile applications to build companies that don’t rely on traditional assets, or physical bricks and mortar for growth, and don’t have a problem working in fully remote fashion.

They are a new wave of Fintechs, and they make it easy for people to get, send or access their money wherever they are, regardless of borders.

At Smile Identity, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with many of these companies who are pioneering new products that enrich consumers’ lives — firms like Chippercash, Kuda, Chaka, Paga, Kudi, Riby and Cellulant — helping to power their on-boarding experiences and KYC checks for bank accounts, debit cards, brokerage services, money transfer, social services and more.

As the world locks down to ride out the Coronavirus crisis and business shifts to virtual channels, traditional banks, healthcare providers and public services (within Africa and out of Africa) can learn a lot from these entrepreneurial firms.

To build an anti-fragile business that can thrive in the current environment, you need scalable services that can be delivered over digital channels.

• What if we used our phones to visit the doctor and order a prescription?
• What if you could open a savings account for your child while they napped in your arms?
• What if you could send money to loved ones instantly, for free!?

Technology can already create this world, but trust is what makes it run.

Achieving trust at scale for high stakes services like medicine and finance requires handling remote customer verification effortlessly, automating ID checks and adding a digital audit trail.

At Smile, we’ve been building these tools for years.

Using our face recognition and KYC services, you can:

• Validate any one of over 200M African issued identities from a phone.
• Confirm that a person on the phone is who they say they are using a seflie,
• And ensure that they’re not creating duplicate accounts in your system.

Not all things can be delivered virtually, but there are many ways to leverage our modern mobile Internet in the era of Covid-19.

• Telemedicine can help triage patients experiencing symptoms
• Apps and notifications can deliver information for governments and eliminate crowds in public squares.
• Mobile money can facilitate commerce with contactless payments
• Educational courses and even exams can be administered online.

If we build a world of anti-fragile organizations that can switch to virtual channels on demand, even for high stakes transactions, we can keep economies moving even while we shelter in place.

It may be months until we can safely shake hands again, but in the modern world we have the power to pick up our phones, smile, prove who we are and move forward with our lives.

We’re here to build trust, so that you can build the future.

— The Smile Identity Team