Mobile Capture

Our solution will help register financially or socially excluded people, collecting their demographic/biometric data, that can be used to setup a new nation ID database or to integrate these data into existing ID national systems. 

Our app´s offline mode adapts itself when there is no internet coverage. Also, our app was designed from the ground-up minding the African reality challenges, being simple and designed specifically to the enhance the last mile efficiency, being easy to use, even by low digital-literacy people, and turns onboarding and other operational processes into fast procedures, executed in quick steps.

Our platform is able to integrate the captured data into different systems between countries/locations with compliance is guaranteed.

By registering these informal workers, even in distant and rural areas, will allow them to have access to social and financial services and make contributions or withdrawals regardless of their origin or current location.

In Africa, 85.5 percent of workers are informal workers (according to ILO). The main causes of this problem are geographical barriers and the limitations of infrastructures that isolate rural communities. These causes are also at the root of the problem of unregistered people, 500 million have no ID according to the organization ID4Africa.

 The Papersoft solution helps to solve the problem:

 • ID registration with Biometrics:

The platform can be used by African governments to register the population in national ID systems, collecting demographic and biometric data. This first step facilitates the objective of social security contributions.

• Integrations & interoperability:

The platform's flexibility allows integrations with different systems, such as foundational ID systems. Thus, the interoperability of systems between countries with compliance is guaranteed.

• Concept Built for Africa:

The app's offline mode adapts itself when there is no internet coverage. In addition, the data compression capacity facilitates operations in rural areas. The app compresses the information collected in data packages of less than 500kb, in order to improve sending over a weak mobile network (2G).

Papersoft Solution is a technology that capacitates companies or even governmental organizations to reach distant and rural communities through the use of agent networks. These authorized agents take companies’ services to areas hard to access simply by using a mobile device with our platform’s app installed.

So, ultimately, our solution serves people in distant areas (unbanked and financially excluded people), giving them access to essential services. 

Our solution is already being used by African Banks and Mobile Money Operators. In Africa, these companies are required to collect demographic in order to stay compliant with national norms. This goes in line with the 2020 Mission Billion goals, since African Governments then use the collected data to build and update ID national Systems and map unregistered citizens.

Papersoft’s platform can also improve people’s lives by giving them access to public services. Our app can easily integrate with 3rd party services (e.g.: state services) meaning that companies using our platform are able to offer their services along with public services.

The more services people can get access to, the less excluded they will be. Inclusion means new opportunities and consequently the improvement of people’s lives.

The problem starts on a major structural challenge: the unregistered population for national ID systems. The creation of a structural base is crucial to support any state social program.

 Thus, it simultaneously tackles the problem of national ID systems and helps on the contributions to social security by informal workers, through mobile technology.

 Regarding the target population, Papersoft operates in Nigeria and Congo. Also, we’re in the 10 finalists for Ecobank’s “Fintech Challenge”, which grants Papersoft the access to the 33 countries that the African bank is present.

Imagine the possibility of using thousands of agent networks of Banks and Telecom Operators to reach millions of informal workers. Wouldn't that be a smart way to facilitate participation in the social security system? 

 Well, this is possible thanks to our solution’s key differentiator: flexibility.

 Mobile Capture platform’s App has a marketplace (service hub) that allows the integration of third party services, including state services.

 The App, as it is, allows already these 2 options:

• The App can be used exclusively to access social security operations (with the help and control of assistants).
• Use existing agent networks of Bank and Telecoms and provide social security services along with the services of these companies, within the App (in the marketplace).

This agility logic is the great innovation of the Papersoft solution. The platform allows you to quickly set up or integrate a process so that informal workers are identified and make their contributions to the social security system.

So far, we are not aware of a solution identical to ours, that is, an agency banking platform whose app has a services marketplace.

 In addition, the platform includes an Agent Management System module. This module can be adapted to control social workers, who are in the field managing social security contributions and payments. This allows remote inspection and greater security against fraud.

 These are the two great differentiators that make our solution innovative and unique on the market.

Papersoft's Mobile Capture application is an Android based solution that runs in any device with Android version 5.1 or above. The Web application runs in multiple browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Edge), using NET Framework 4.8, JQuery, Mongo and SQL database as the backend technology stack. 

Papersoft’s Mobile Capture Platform is used for different uses cases, such as, for Onboarding & ID Verification and/or for Agent Management and/or Financial Services Marketplace purposes.

Below is a resume of some use cases scope:

• Account Opening in Nigeria for Fidelity Bank, in Democratic Republic of Congo for Equity Bank, in Angola for Banco Postal and in Kenya for KCB Bank;
• Customer Onboarding in Mozambique and Democratic Republic of Congo, in both countries for Vodacom and m-pesa;
• Financial Services (Cash in/out, Bills payment, funds transfer) in Nigeria for Fidelity Bank.
• SDK for enrolment and verification in Nigeria for NIBSS (Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System).

Papersoft’s Mobile Capture Platform Footprint:

• +12K Active Agents, +30M KYC´s YoY in 5 African countries, such as, in Nigeria, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Kenya.

• +8 years work in financial inclusion in Africa referenced in studies by GSMA and CFI.

The mission of this Challenge is to find the solutions to the question: "How can informal sector workers in West Africa more easily participate in social protection programs?"

Papersoft's proposed solution will be able to aims to register and onboard all the informal sector workers in West Africa, by providing web & mobile applications to users that are built-for-Africa with easy-to-use interface and enhanced user experience. This applications will help to collect the informal sector workers eKYC giving them the opportunity to onboard and participate in more social protection programs. The built-for-Africa set of features allows us to reach even the most remote and low connectivity areas of West Africa, allowing users to also work offline. Papersoft's platform also provides the capability of interoperability with existing National databases for identity verification purposes, reducing the possibility of fraudulent registrations.

The immediate outcome that results from this activities is to be able to collect all the informal sector workers eKYC, validate their identity and register this information in the social programs databases so that this workers can have quick and easy access to participate in social protection programs. The identity verification and anti-fraud features will reduce the risk of fraudulent registrations, providing transparency and security to its users and clients.

In a long-term outcome, the Papersoft platform will enable all of the informal sector workers from West Africa (and other regions of Africa) to be properly register in a National social database in where they can have easy access to all social protection programs available.

Papersoft goal is to target the informal sector by reaching them with easy-to-use onboarding application, so that they can have provide access to social programs and encourage financial savings, transparency, and accountability.

As shown before, the Mobile Capture platform is very flexible and it is prepared to integrate with several systems, as is the case with social protection IT systems.

Our solution addresses the objective of the Mission Billion Challenge because it has the capacity to connect social security systems and national ID systems, ensuring a constant updating of databases and ensuring the security of operations.

This feature guarantees that there is no fraud through identity theft, duplication of payments or even the problem of "ghost workers".

The key to achieve the objective is convenience. If we make social security services easily accessible in people's daily lives, we exponentially increase the chances of informal workers to participate in social security programs.

So, we just need to take advantage of the banks’, telecom operators’ and other companies’ networks of agents and merchants for this purpose. These authorized agents only need a smartphone to run the Mobile Capture platform’s App and make services available.

In rural communities (regional level), operations of money withdrawals (mobile money) or banking transfers done at an authorized agent is part of their daily routines. Therefore, making social security operations available at these points makes participation more convenient and a new “normal” reality.

As a core competence in Papersoft, we have experience in integrating Identity Management solutions.

Our solution was developed with an agility mindset and to be as flexible as possible. The platform is prepared to be installed on-prem or to work as cloud-based, in order to be able to respond to different legal requirements of African countries.

Structurally, the platform is also prepared to adapt to different industries and sectors. The fit to different industries’ business needs is simple and fast. The adaptation to social protection programs will follow the same logic: ease of setting rules and workflows for any sector (state sector included)

Regarding delivery systems, the mobile App version of the platform, allows running the solution on basic Android mobile devices, which facilitates the provision of services with few resources.

Papersoft's platforms provides access to its Rest API with multiple methods that can be consumed from the Papersoft platform (create record, download record, change record status, view record, and others).

The Rest API is currently under development by Papersoft development team and the respective API documentation can be shared in later stages of this initiative.

Papersoft solutions were designed and developed for the African market, with a set of features that are built for Africa. The mobile capture application works in both online and offline environments, allowing the mobile users to work even under low connectivity areas.

The mobile  application an especial compression algorithm for the e-forms and images, making the submission very small in order to facilitate submissions in low connectivity areas, and save data to the mobile users.

Our solutions have a very straight forward and easy-to-use interface, facilitating the user experience even for users with low literacy and numeracy levels.

Our Mobile Capture serve currently more than 12K Active Agents serve and do more than 30M KYC´s YoY in 5 African countries, such as, in Nigeria, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo in the diffrent projects/use cases described above.

We expecte in one year to serve is to reach 20K Active Agents and do up to 50M KYC´s YoY.

In 5 years, our goal is to to reach 150K Active Agents and do up to 500M KYC´s YoY.

We expecte in one year to serve is to reach 20K Active Agents and do up to 50M KYC´s YoY.

In 5 years, our goal is to to reach 150K Active Agents and do up to 500M KYC´s YoY.

Legal barries due to different regulatories scopes for KYC requirements in each country.

Financial barries due to funding raising, as well as, eventual economic and financial issues in countries that we currently operate in or in future markets that we wants to be in.

Find digital financial services and find new commercial and technical partners to help us to implementing the projects in targeted countries.

Not applicable.

Below is a resume of our solution team. All staff presented below are full-time staff.

> Sales & Marketing: 7 FTE´s

> Business Consultant/Process Analyst: 2 FTE´s

> Project Manager: 2 FTE´s

> Technical Team:

.Architect (solution & security) - 2 FTE´s
.Developer - 4 FTE´s
.Implementation Team/Infrastructure and platform stack and Configuration Management Expert - 3 FTE´s
.IT Helpdesk and Support – 2 FTE´s
.Migration and Testing Expert & Q&A Expert - 3 FTE´s

Papersoft has been present in the African market for the last 9 years, implementing solutions designed for African reality challenges. Since then, our teams were evolved in implementing end-to-end solutions to help Banks and Telcos reach consumers everywhere, improving continuously the last mile experience.  We are experts in developing mobile technologies that capture data in rough field conditions and connect seamlessly to back-office processes for a flawless and secure delivery of financial or other services to all communities, near or distant.

 We would consider ourselves as top performance as we have long term happy customers, market leaders in each area and we have been referenced multiple times within the Industry/Customers, some examples below:

• Vodacom Vendor Award 2018
• “Excellence in Agency Banking” award by Finnovex in 2019 (via Fidelity Bank)
• Referenced in as leaders by GSMA in “The future of mobile money agent distribution networks” in 2018

 What makes Papersoft unique is both our powerful platform and our project implementation methodology.  Papersoft follow Agile methodology for product development cycle. We use our certified Project Management Methodology, but can also extend Agile to overall implementation and ongoing project/program purposes.

Below is a resume of some of our key technical staff respective experience:

• CPO and Head of Growth +10 years’ experience

• CTO and Head of R&D +10 years’ experience

• COO - Head of Projects & Operations +10 years’ experience

• Sr. Project Manager/Business Analyst +13 years’ experience

• Sr. Full Stack Developer +12 years’ experience

• Sr. Mobile Software Engineer +5 years’ experience

Papersoft has multiple partners for both Software and Hardware solutions. Papersoft have a NDA approach with the partners.

Please find the list with our technology partners below:

Technology partners:
- Microsoft (Software & hosting partner)
- Innovatrics (Biometric solutions partner)
- Aware (Biometric solutions partner)
- Polygon (Biometric solutions partner)
- Mambu (Banking software partner)
- Temenos (Banking software partner)
- Collab (Call center software partner)
- Google (Software partner)
- Visa (Banking software partner)
- IB (Biometric devices partner)
- Technocrat IT (Devices partner)
- Biorrugged (Devices partner)
- Famoco (Devices partner)

In many African Regions, reaching financially or socially excluded consumers with the traditional brick & mortar distribution model is a costly endeavor.  

We have a Flexible Business Model, that allows client to choose the payment model that best suits his strategy. We have a flexible business model with the options of one-time fee or revenue share.

For banking sector example, our solutions allows to:

• Have an alternative distribution strategy in which traditional retail banking use authorized agents to expand the reach of the branch network. As it makes it possible to reach more people and more locations, promoting this way a financial inclusion.
• Cut on operational and brick-and-mortar costs and at the same time to reach new customers in distant and rural areas. The agents represent an alternative delivery channel (ADC) and they assist the customer onboarding process, ensuring the compliance norms of KYC with biometrics.
• Have a remote digital onboarding to get their services to places of difficult access and distant communities.
• With an agent network strategy, onboarding customer for new services, with the assistance of agents that guarantee more security to the process. Agents can take any business anywhere, reducing operating costs, improving client convenience and spotting new market segments.
• Build and manage a sustainable agent network, offering the right tools to help agents on the field improve the customer experience, streamline the KYC process and mitigate the risk of fraud.
• Agents to open a mobile money account and easily manage reconciliation and agent commissions on transactions.

Papersoft financial sustainability are based on the revenue of the products and services that we sell.

Papersoft last year revenue from products and services sold was ~4M USD.

Currently there is no funding being raised, this process is planned to start only in 2021.

This information is reserved and cannot be shared publicly.

This iniciative will allows us to have a higher brand awareness from company and solution standpoint, which will also help us to find more digital financial services in the countries that we are in and in the countries that we wants to be in.

Product/service distribution - help find more digital financial services so we can deliver the solution faster.

Funding and revenue model - build and maintain the app that will be in this initiative

Talent recruitment - to help us to get more skilled staff

Marketing, media, and exposure - bring a higher brand awareness for the company and solutions.

With Linda and Bill Gates foundation for brand awareness and funds raising purposes.

With Mojaloop for integration/interoperability purposes with their identity system.

With Mosip for integration/interoperablity purposes with their identity platform.