Esther Fawole
Sisan Dorsu is the founder of Nigerian-based startup Torche, a fintech solution that enables customers make payments and other transactions with their face, fingerprints through biometric POS terminals.
Her aim is to improve payment solutions in Africa with its biometric payment systems. The founding of the startup follows the millions of Africans who are unbanked or underbanked.
Dorsu estimated that, only eight percent of Nigerians use debit cards as many avoid the technology due to card fraud, low literacy levels, POS failure rates, and so on. For this reason, Dorsu decided in buildingTorche to give people the opportunity to evolve and achieve their full potential by making financial services accessible by simply being identified through their biometrics, that is, with just the face, fingerprint or palm, one can pay for items.
Sisan Dorsu’s mission is to see a society where everyone is able to play as themselves because not everyone has a card, bank account, or high literacy levels but they do have faces, fingerprints, and palms.
In April, her startup was among the 12 companies selected for the Techstars New York (Techstars NYC) Class of Spring 2022, where founders undergo 12-week training and get to be mentored by other seasoned entrepreneurs.
Dorsu spent her early years in the United States. At the age of seven, she moved to America but never forgot the difficulties of many Nigerians, particularly children, this fueled her dream to build an Africa where children would be able to achieve their full potential. As an adult, her worries then extended to exploring ways to enable the unbanked population in Nigeria to get access to financial services.
What finally inspired Dorsu to create solutions for Africa was her encounter with former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in 2009, following Obama’s visit to the Children’s National in Washington D.C where Dorsu battled kidney failure.
Michelle Obama signed Dorsu’s pillow by writing ‘Dream Big Dreams’. Since that day, Dorsu have been on a mission to building an African continent where all children have access to systems allowing them to not just live and survive, but to also dream big dreams and achieve their full potential.
