Identity fraud is a growing global issue, costing businesses billions of dollars annually. Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated, using tactics like SIM swapping to hijack mobile phones and assume identities, so simply relying on passwords is no longer enough. To truly protect customers, organizations need to adopt advanced biometric identification mechanisms.
At Seamfix, we’re committed to ensuring that everyone has access to secure, modern methods of identity verification. Our solutions are critical for enabling secure access to banking, communication, and essential services. As our co-founder Chimezie Emewulu says, “Identity is a right, not a privilege.”
To enhance the accuracy and performance of our identity verification products, we partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to integrate cutting-edge facial recognition technology. Through this collaboration, we’ve significantly reduced identity fraud for our customers, providing them with the robust security they need to create and verify identities, ensuring trust and security across industries.
Opportunity | Using AWS Services to Improve Identity Verification
Seamfix, with headquarters in Africa and offices in London and Dubai, delivers advanced digital identity verification solutions across sectors such as banking, government, and telecommunications. Our mission is to guarantee secure digital identities for millions, supported by our ISO 27701:2019 Privacy Information Management System (PIMS) and ISO 27001:2022 Information Security Management System (ISMS) certifications.
We playsa pivotal role in streamlining processes like customer onboarding, transaction verification, KYC procedures, and identity updates—serving as a vital bridge connecting Africa with the global community.
Since launching our first solution in 2008, we’ve processed over 300 million identities. Initially, we deployed a fingerprint-based solution that prevented exam fraud by stopping students from impersonating others. While effective, the system required specialized hardware and wasn’t always as accurate as we needed.
By 2018, as we sought to expand, it became clear we needed a more precise and scalable solution. This led us to explore facial recognition, leveraging artificial intelligence to improve accuracy and convenience for our clients. To realize this vision, we turned to AWS for its unmatched scalability and reliability.
“For us, accuracy is key, and that’s where AWS came in,” says Chimezie Emewulu, co-founder of Seamfix. With AWS, we can expand our services to fulfill our mission of making secure digital identities accessible to everyone. Our partnership with AWS is helping us deliver on our promise: a secure digital identity is a fundamental right, not a privilege.
Solution | Reducing Fraud by 90% with Amazon Rekognition
In 2019, we launched Seamfix Verify (formerly Verified.africa) , our all-in-one ID verification suite to help organizations across Africa combat the growing issue of identity fraud. Using sophisticated AI models for facial recognition, Seamfix Verify cross-checks millions of identity records with incredible speed and accuracy.
As we expanded into new markets and grew our customer base, we needed a scalable solution, which is why we partnered with AWS. By leveraging Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for flexible compute capacity and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for secure data storage, we built a platform that could meet the demands of our expanding global footprint.
One of the most powerful tools in our arsenal is Amazon Rekognition, which provides advanced computer vision capabilities to analyze images and videos. By integrating Rekognition, we were able to offer near-real-time identity verification through mobile apps, significantly improving accuracy.
Before using Amazon Rekognition, our facial recognition system had an accuracy rate of 80%. With Rekognition, we’ve increased that to 95–99%. This enhancement has reduced fraud cases for our clients by over 90%, virtually eliminating instances like SIM swap fraud.
We’ve also drastically reduced false negatives, ensuring that legitimate account owners are rarely locked out of their accounts. “With our current technology, the matching is almost always correct based on the thresholds we set,” says our co-founder, Chimezie Emewulu.
Speed has been another game-changer for us. One of our clients needed to clean up a database of over 100 million faces to remove duplicates—a process that would have taken years using traditional methods. With Amazon Rekognition, we processed 3.6 million faces in under 2 hours, completing the entire project in just 4 days.
This partnership with AWS hasn’t just improved our capabilities—it’s empowered our clients. By drastically reducing fraud, they’ve enhanced their brand reputation and avoided the costly consequences of identity misuse. Plus, our clients can get up and running within a week using our solution, compared to the months it would take to build their own verification system from scratch.
Outcome | Expanding Our Services and Reach on AWS
At Seamfix, we’re taking our identity services to new heights, with a strong focus on growing our presence in Europe and the Middle East. As an independent software vendor on AWS Marketplace, we now offer essential identity verification solutions like face matching, background cleanup, image quality checks, and passive liveness detection, all designed for easy integration and adoption.
In 2023, we joined the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (AWS MAP), which has been pivotal in helping us migrate our customers to the cloud more efficiently. This shift enables us to scale our services seamlessly and cost-effectively, and it even helps reduce reliance on standby generators during power outages—a common challenge in many parts of Africa.
“Using AWS gave us the clarity we needed,” says our co-founder, Chimezie Emewulu. “We want to continue leveraging AWS to expand our services and achieve our mission of making secure digital identity a fundamental right for all.”
Our collaborations with global organizations like GSMA, Tech UK, and COMIT reflect our commitment to providing secure digital identity access not just in Africa but around the world. By empowering organizations and individuals with reliable identity management, we’re making life, work, and learning more secure and accessible for everyone.
About Seamfix
Founded in 2007, Seamfix is an international software company specializing in identity management solutions. Our solutions enable businesses to easily create, manage, and verify customers’ and employees’ identities, helping prevent fraud and secure transactions.
To learn more about how we can help you, use the link below to book a free consultation.
