ThisIsMe Wins Innovation Award and Partners with RCS at AfricArena 2018
The second edition of the international tech conference, Africa Arena, took place on the 15th and 16th of November at the Century City Convention Centre and did not disappoint. Cape Town based startup, ThisIsMe, won the Innovation Award and investor challenge set by RCS, which is wholly owned by the BNP Paribas Group, one of the largest banks in Europe (BNP Paribas Personal Finance South Africa, trades as RCS). ThisIsMe will now partner with RCS to explore how best to ease customer onboarding and transaction approvals using ThisIsMe’s fully digitized KYC and onboarding solution.
AfricArena aims to showcase Africa’s best startups and innovators to local and international investors through a series of challenges and live pitches. AfricArena CEO Christophe Viarnaud had this to say, “with over $2-million in deals being done, startup-corporate partnerships being struck and a wave of energy and innovation from African entrepreneurs, we could not be more excited about the future”.
There were 11 innovation challenges altogether from a wide range of industries including; energy, health, agriculture, fintech and regtech. The RCS challenge looked for innovative customer identity verification solutions and stated, “the system will enhance the current authentication process, but also allow RCS to fully digitize onboarding and customer engagement processes in a remote but secure way across all available and new channels (in-store, online and via mobile application).”
Rudi Visser; the Head of Innovation Acceleration of RCS commented, “We would like to congratulate ThisIsMe for winning the RCS challenge and we are very eager to start exploring ways to integrate their innovative technology and making this new partnership successful for everyone, especially our customers.”
“We are very proud to have won the challenge and excited about the opportunity to work with RCS. More and more we are seeing large corporates partnering with unique and innovative startups to help them solve real-world problems, especially throughout Africa. Events like AfricArena are helping to bring the right people together in order to solve more problems and we look forward to doing that with RCS,“ Juan Furmie, CEO of ThisIsMe.
AfricArena 2018 saw a host of new partnerships, funding rounds and new companies gaining exposure. For the South African and African startup arena it has sparked new growth opportunities, partnerships and international traction.
About RCS:
The RCS Group (RCS) is a consumer finance business that offers its customers a range of financial services products under its own brand name and in association with a number of leading retailers in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. The core purpose of RCS is to enhance people’s lifestyles and protect their financial security through innovative, desirable and accessible credit solutions. The idea is to enable RCS customers to enjoy the convenience, comfort and peace of mind offered by these credit solutions.
About ThisIsMe:
ThisIsMe simplifies KYC, AML and on-boarding processes for businesses and provides a verified data vault for connected individuals, using advanced, online identity verification. Our technologies are multi award-winning, scalable and reduce the regulatory burden for businesses while providing a valuable experience for individuals.
