Little and TrueCaller Strike User Identity Verification Partnership, But is it a Good Idea?

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Little Cab and TrueCaller have struck a partnership that will see the improvement of the verification process of users and the general safety of the cab-hailing platform. The collaboration is in the form of an integration system, for which Little will enhance customer identity verification. The firm says that the exercise will ‘minimize risks of less verified users and maximize trust in the Little platform.’

The majority of us know TrueCaller. It is one of the most used apps in Kenya, and Africa at large with 25 million users. Generally, it is used to identify unknown phone numbers. This function has made the app insanely popular, thusly the preceding partnership that Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO at Little lauds as follows:

“This partnership is an affirmation of the company’s commitment to offer value, enhance the user experience, safety and further grow the service regionally. The new service will enable an identification process, blocking unverified users from accessing the platform, minimizing risk and enhancing safety.”

Basically, TrueCaller provides a software development kit that then helps developers, among other groups such as businesses, in this case, Little, to verify and authenticate new user registrations through phone numbers. Based on the operational model of the SDK, users will no longer be prompted with a one-time password (OTP) when signing up/into the Little app provided they have a TrueCaller profile.

Considering Little is a large organization that is tasked to safeguard user data, the firm has not highlighted privacy concerns that have been raised regarding TrueCaller. The app, as is WhatsApp that has since been dropped for chats in any serious enterprise, is not GDPR-compliant – although some of its permissions and data demanded from users outside the European Union are absent for users in that region.

TrueCaller has since reiterated that it takes privacy concerns seriously, but that is what any other corporation says.

That aside, TrueCaller is, by the way, in the process of launching a developer program in Kenya to engage more deeply with the eco-system.