Odegbami: YouID Allows You to Live Smart

Youverify.inc, a technology company recently launched, YouID, a secured digital wallet solution that allows individuals to secure and store all identity information and documents in an encrypted format. CEO and Founder of YouVerify Inc., Dr Gbenga Odegbami, explain how it works and also highlights economy worth of YouID to potential users and businesses in this interview with MARY NNAH

What informed your decision to come up with YouID, the all-in-one identity information app?
What really triggered what we are doing now, is an experience my mom had. It was so hard for anyone to hack her account before because she was very safe with her money but immediately she moved to online and USSD banking, she started losing money. And we said okay let’s see how we can solve some of the image problems that we have in Nigeria because it is now becoming a pandemic.

YouID is a secured digital ID wallet that allows you to store all identity information and documents in an encrypted format and allows you to access opportunities at a go. So YouID allows you to live smart.

So, you only need to fill a form once and any other time you want to access any other opportunity your other information is in your phone. It is neither with anybody else nor with us at YouID. That means that even if you put a gun on our head we do not even know the information you have. The information is only with you and you alone have the power and exclusivity to share that information with any merchant or service provider that you choose to do.

Our goal at YouID is basically to eliminate you from filling the form twice or numerous times. Once you upload your information you just need to click to fill any form, hopefully in any part of the world but let’s start with Nigeria.

This is the first app that I know of actually, that you can get mapped to a loan based on who you are. Your phone actually knows the kind of load that you qualify for; before you apply for a job, it knows the kind of job that you are qualified for. So it allows you to live smart; instead of applying for a 100 things before you get one, just buy your identity and we are able to put this in your phone which will profile you and map you to the right opportunities for you to start living smart.

We did not just stop there but also added some spices to it. In Nigeria we are not very used to data breaches and data security. All these sound too advanced but what we do with YouID is that anywhere somebody has hacked any data, it does not necessarily have to be Nigeria; all of us sign into google, yahoo mail, Facebook and so many different platforms online; immediately somebody has hacked your data in any of those platforms, we would inform you that you need to change your password.

The app is also that intelligent to also be able prompt you, without you doing anything, to take the right action.
And the whole thing is how do we grow our economy? The only way we can scale our economy to cater for over 200 million (200,000,000) people is to go digital because it is very expensive to create factories and the whole point of view is how do we connect you to this opportunities in the digital space and how do we make sure that when we are connecting you, we are connecting you in a secured and safe manner. That is why we came up with YouID.

This is an app that takes a lot of data. What is the level of compliance with the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation?
We are in full compliance with NDPR and not just Nigeria’s because it is not just a Nigerian platform. We are actually launching it in multiple countries; we are in compliance with multiple data regulation agencies. As part of that compliance that is why we made it self-regulatory in the sense that you actually control your data. We do not have access to your data. We are in full compliance with all those data and information security policies and regulations put in place in the countries in which we operate.

You mentioned that merchants and businesses are going to take advantage of this app for KYC. Are there other E-commerce advantages that they are going to get from this?
If you want to get yourself on board an e-commerce platform you need to fill a form in the first place – names, email, phone number and other KYC information. So what that means is that with YouID, on-boarding for an e-commerce platform is faster because you do not have to go through all that filling process. You can just scan your YouID code on the platform and you are on-boarded. What that means is that every single time you want to run a transaction, you are a pre-verified customer meaning that your ID already exists in a format that ensures you are not fictitious. It is the same way when you want an on-board merchant to sell something.

In addition, one of the things that a lot of E-commerce businesses have been trying to do for many years is to give their user credits but I am not going to give anybody credit just based on your email and phone number that might be fictitious. But with YouID when e-commerce companies allow you to sign off, you are actually confirming that you are a real human being and that they actually have some level of confidence in who you are. So if they want to give you a credit, they can decide to give you based on the credence score on your YouID. That is the kind of transformation that YouID adds to the e-commerce space, not just in Nigeria but in all the other markets that we operate in.
What we do is very specific and unique in the customer journey. We are basically pre-screening and qualifying a customer from the business perspective and from the users perspective we are just like a secured safe for you.

What is it going to cost people to key into this initiative?
The app is free to use. You can download it right away if you want.

Who pays for your service and how does your company generate revenue from this?
For the individuals the service is free of charge. All you need to do is to simply go to the google app store, download it and you are ready to go. In terms of businesses, the merchants actually pay. It is a subscription service so you just subscribe to our service and then you would have access. We are pretty much a gateway for data and KYC information between you and the merchants. So the merchants pay for our services to access your information.

Sometimes it is a problem for an e-commerce company to give credit to their users because they don’t have the KYC or the infrastructure to do this or maybe the cost doesn’t make sense for them to do the KYC part – YouID solves that problem for them. So that is the problem we are solving and for which they are paying.

And because of the empowerment we are not transferring that cost to individuals because your data is with you and you decide who you want to work with and who you do not want to work with; so all the empowerment is for the individual users of YouID.

What happens to my data if I lose my phone?
There is a data backup feature that comes with YouID. For Android you can connect the app to the google drive. For iOS, you can connect it to iCloud Storage. All your information is stored and encrypted to either your google drive or iCloud storage. So once you login on your new phone, go to the data backup and import from your google drive or from your iCloud storage and restore all your information.

How do you mean that you do not have access to the information I’m going to put on your app?
Let me explain the information flow. What the users do is that they get their physical IDs and scan them (we are eliminating you typing and so we introduce scanning). So, when you scan these IDs, we use computer vision to extract all your information, encrypt it and store it on your device. It is not leaving your phone. The only time that information leaves your phone is when you grant access to a merchant; let’s say you want to apply for a loan or you want to shop online. At that point you have granted access to your data by passing the information from your phone directly to the merchants.

Youverify just acted as a processor. We act as both data processor and data controller, so at that moment we are acting as a processor, so we just move the information along. We don’t have it; we just pass it to the merchants. It is the merchants that require that information that now has access to your information.

The beauty of this is that YouID also serves as a kind of store. We have something we call a vault in the app. So, everywhere you have given access to your personal information you can actually go there and see what data you gave out. And if you feel a particular platform should not have access to your data any more, you can revoke it. When you revoke your data we remove your data from the merchant’s system and it becomes inactive and the merchant can no longer access your information. In return you don’t have access to that service which you subscribed for again.

How long did it take your company to come up with this app?
I think the first time we talked about it was late 2017, so it was about two and a half years ago that we started the process. We are actually the frontier of digital ID.

What Features have you put in place to prevent hackers from penetrating your app?
The information about you is not with us but on your phone. Although our website is secured, your information is not on our server; so if someone should go to our website now, they cannot find any information about you. It is on your phone. We just offer a pathway to flow that information from you to the merchants and to allow you exercise control over that data.