Truecaller active users in Africa reaches 43 million, introduces new business identity solution

15 Apr 2021

Truecaller has revealed that its number of active users in Africa has reached 43 million. The company said the growth indicates a pressing need to increase trust in communication as the rise in fraud and scams using spoofed identities is on the rise across the continent. The telephone search engine and caller ID service also announced the launch of a new identity solution for businesses.

Photo by Lindsey LaMont on Unsplash

The enterprise solution dubbed "Truecaller Business Identity" allows businesses to verify their identities using a green verified business badge, which presents a name, photo and logo.

Apart from the green caller ID and green verified business badge, a verified business on Truecaller gets a verified tick mark icon and can lock their brand name and profile photo. This lets consumers know exactly which calls to trust. Importantly, consumers will continue to see the number of spam markings as usual, and they retain the right to mark verified numbers as spam or block them completely.

Truecaller’s spam algorithms will still continue to work in the same way and the Truecaller global community of over 270 million active users will be able to mark calls that are potentially spam/scam/sales calls, even if they have a verified badge and caller ID.

Speaking during the launch, Zakaria Hersi, director of business development in Africa, said: “Fraud continues to be a major issue across Africa and as a company, Truecaller wanted to provide solutions on a business level as well as a personal level. Trust is at the heart of everything we do and with so much of our lives lived through our phone, we need to ensure that our communication happens in a safe environment."

“Truecaller is ready to scale the offering to a significant number of businesses globally ensuring users can trust more calls coming from these businesses making communication safer for everyone. Our robust verification process can help consumers identify calls that can be 100% trusted to be initiated by a particular business. Over a period, this can result in a drastic reduction of frauds and scams that happen over phone calls,” added Sony Joy, VP and head of Truecaller Enterprise.