This app helps refugees get bank accounts by giving them a digital identity
Many refugees lack the paperwork necessary to open an account, forcing them into the black market. Taqanu wants to use what they do have: smartphones and social media.
If you move to Berlin, you need a bank account to rent an apartment, sign a contract for a mobile phone, or deposit a paycheck. But for refugees and asylum seekers–who typically don’t have the ID cards that most banks require–it can be nearly impossible to get an account.
A new startup called Taqanu is designing an alternative. Instead of asking for standard identification, it uses something that almost all refugees do have: a smartphone. An app installed on a phone can track someone’s digital data, including social networking, to prove their identity. Users will also create a “reputation network,” asking friends and family to vouch that someone is who they say they are. The app also asks refugees to upload photos of any documents they have, such as papers from a refugee camp in Greece. As the app is used, it continues to collect more evidence of someone’s identity.
“Basically, our goal is to constantly authenticate someone’s identity through their bank account, and use someone’s digital footprint as the source of identity,” says founder Balázs Némethi.
He drew on his own experience of the challenges of opening a bank account in a foreign country, something that can be difficult even with documentation. Refugees and asylum seekers often have nothing more than a temporary ID issued by the German government when they cross the border. A passport may have been lost along the way, or, in some cases, sold.
Without a bank account, an asylum seeker can’t safeguard savings, and everyday transactions become more complicated. In Germany, a bank account is also required to sign a contract (like a lease) and necessary for most employers.
Taqanu plans to partner with a bank to offer basic banking services such as a limited checking account and limited debit card. The account is limited based on how much proof someone can provide of their identity. Over time, the app continues collecting data, and the amount of service increases accordingly.
The app can also double as an alternative to a credit score by providing proof of a user’s trustworthiness. Over time, the startup plans to also work with credit or microfinance institutions who can offer other services, using Taqanu’s ability to identify customers as a screening tool.
“Where there’s an interesting role for these kinds of new technologies to play I think is just in terms of showing how things could be done differently,” says Radha Rajkotia, senior director for economic recovery and development at the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian organization. “In Europe and also in the Middle East, I think there’s a real opportunity for technology to show the path forward in terms of how policymakers might think about ID systems and provide proof-of-concepts of how some of these things might work.”
