Shufti Becomes the Compliance Backbone Behind Prime Focus, Extending Its Reach Into Africa's Fintech Frontier

Shufti partners with an African fintech, Prime Focus, to power KYC, biometric verification, and AML/PEP/sanctions screening across two flagship platforms.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, August 18, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Shufti, a Glocal full-compliance lifecycle management solution, today extended its global footprint into Africa's fintech frontier with a new partnership with Prime Focus Private Limited, a Zimbabwean fintech building financial infrastructure for Africa's small and medium enterprises.

Combining global scalability with local precision, Shufti adapts identity verification to diverse markets through advanced facial biometrics, deepfake detection, seamless eIDV and VideoIdent, empowering organizations to onboard customers securely while staying ahead of evolving global regulations.

This partnership makes Shufti's identity verification and KYC Compliance capabilities the backbone behind both of Prime Focus's flagship products, Purse Universal Wallet and Savant Payment Gateway, extending its footprint into fiat-and-crypto wallets. Shufti's technology has run 4.29 billion identity checks worldwide, and now powers one of Zimbabwe's fastest-moving fintech platforms.

“Prime Focus is addressing a challenge every digital financial platform faces: secure, compliant onboarding at scale. That's where Shufti comes in, supporting Prime Focus with identity verification and compliance built to strengthen trust across its platforms. As digital financial services grow across Africa, strong compliance infrastructure is becoming essential, and Prime Focus is a clear example of that shift. This collaboration reflects our continued commitment to fintech innovation in emerging markets, with MEA a key priority for us," said Umair Hameed, Regional Vice President, Sales, MEA, Shufti.

Compliance Got Harder, and Shufti Was Built for It:
Prime Focus is pursuing a Payment Service Provider license in Zimbabwe. As part of this journey, the company identified the need to enhance its customer verification framework, including biometric verification capabilities required for regulated financial service providers. Prime Focus faced that requirement while also needing to verify identities across borders and run AML, PEP, sanctions, and additional compliance checks before a single customer could transact.

Managing these requirements internally presented scalability challenges. Prime Focus therefore evaluated external solutions and selected Shufti to support its identity verification and compliance needs.

Through the integration, Prime Focus uses Shufti's Document Verification with OCR, Facial Biometrics, Duplicate Account Detection, AML Screening, PEP Screening, and Sanctions Screening capabilities across Purse Universal Wallet and Savant Payment Gateway.

Shufti's face verification holds the industry's toughest anti-spoofing certification, iBeta ISO/IEC 30107-3 Level 3 PAD conformance for single selfie liveness detection on Android and iOS with zero errors, and its screening runs at 99.7% biometric accuracy and a 96.24% automation rate, ranked among the top identity verification platforms globally.

Shufti is also certified to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, supporting secure identity verification for organizations operating across global markets. These are the standards Prime Focus is now relying on to scale quickly while staying compliant.

The integration now runs across both sides of Prime Focus's business:
-Purse Universal Wallet, a consumer wallet moving both fiat and crypto/stablecoin transactions, where every customer is verified through Shufti before they can transact.
-Savant Payment Gateway, where Shufti now screens merchants transacting on the platform, on top of the banks, microfinances, SMEs, fintechs, regulators, and insurers Prime Focus already serves.

"As a company, we are excited to be working with Shufti to bring better KYC verification technologies to Africa. As a fintech, we support any reg-tech tools that complement fintech and banks in emerging economies. Shufti gives its clients a cost-effective solution. The Purse Universal Wallet, a product we developed, is able to onboard customers in over 200 countries thanks to this partnership with Shufti," said Spencer Chigananda, CEO of Prime Focus.

About Shufti
Shufti is a Glocal Identity verification and compliance platform that streamlines the entire KYC/AML journey through one unified solution. Built entirely in-house on a proprietary stack rather than third-party verification chains, Shufti delivers identity verification, facial biometrics, deepfake detection, and VideoIdent with true data sovereignty and enterprise-grade security. Shufti’s passive liveness detection is certified to iBeta Level 3 (ISO/IEC 30107-3) with a 0% error rate, and the platform is certified to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, and is fully GDPR compliant. For more details visit: www.shuftipro.com

About Prime Focus
Prime Focus Private Limited is a Zimbabwean fintech company founded in 2018 that designs and develops software solutions for the financial services industry "from first principles." Its mission is to demystify and simplify e-commerce and payments for African small and medium enterprises. Prime Focus's product suite includes Purse Universal Wallet, Savant Payment Gateway, an invoicing and billing service, and a KYC verification engine, serving customers and businesses across Zimbabwe, the wider African market, and Europe.

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Aroosa Virk
Shufti
partnership@shuftipro.com
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