Identity verification firm iiDENTIFii has appointed Marco Wagener as CEO.
In a statement, the firm says the co-founder and former CTO of the company, Wagener takes the helm as the company enters its next strategic growth phase.
According to the company, the business has grown from a South African identity verification innovator into an enterprise identity verification platform that proves a person is real.
Its clients include banks, payment service providers, mobile network operators and public sector institutions across South Africa, Africa and in the UK.
The appointment comes as identity fraud enters a new phase. The company notes that generative AI has industrialised attack tooling with a 740% year-on-year rise in iOS injection-attack tradecraft, which is automated fraud that episodic, once-off identity checks were never built to withstand.
The iiDENTIFii Identity Index 2024 ranked AI-driven fraud as the biggest emerging identity fraud trend to prepare for, with 59.2% of all surveyed respondents highlighting it as a concern, says the firm.
It adds that the opportunity is large and increasingly African. According to Mordor Intelligence, the global digital identity market is expected to grow by 17.54% CAGR over the next five years.
Its data singles out government-to-person payment rails as a key growth driver across Africa and notes that in African markets, where connectivity gaps and document variability raise the bar, the providers best placed to win are those that localise.
iiDENTIFii says Wagener has helped lead the business since its inception and has been central to its technical, product, and commercial direction.
He steered iiDENTIFii’s technology and product strategy through a period of rapid change in the identity market, and his tenure will usher in the next phase of its global growth, it adds.
“What began as a remote biometric identity verification platform has evolved into identity infrastructure for a world where trust cannot stop at onboarding. Digital trust is breaking faster than the controls protecting it. As AI-driven fraud, digital injection attacks and deepfakes reshape the threat landscape, institutions need trust to be continuous, reusable and resilient,” Wagener says.
“My focus is on scaling iiDENTIFii’s strategic direction, further strengthening our market position across Africa, and continuing to build the trusted digital identity infrastructure institutions and their customers cannot afford to doubt.”
The company has set out a strategic direction it describes as an “identity infrastructure for the digital age”: identity established once, then held securely, reused across channels and carried into the moments where money moves. Today the proof is in verification; the fabric is what iiDENTIFii is building.
Wagener explains that iiDENTIFii has extended its verification platform to digital identity acceptance, reusable verifiable credentials and identity-linked secure payments credentials.
According to the company, the identity verification market has seen substantial developments over the past six months, driven by regulatory acceleration, government-backed reusable digital identity investments, AI-driven fraud concerns, and global market consolidation.
AI in particular has shaken up the market, adding layers of complexity, it notes, adding that this has become especially urgent as non-human identities, including agentic AI systems, explode across enterprise networks.
The iiDENTIFii board sees Wagener’s appointment as a means to address the significant technical insight required to take the company to the next level.
The board says Wagener’s transition into the role from 1 January 2026 ensures continuity in leadership as the company enters its next growth phase.
“Under Marco’s leadership, iiDENTIFii will continue to build on its established strength while expanding across digital identity toward a trusted identity infrastructure,” comments Larry McCarthy, chairperson of iiDENTIFii.
“His appointment brings continuity in purpose, leadership and ambition, with renewed focus as the business scales and helps shape the next generation of identity verification from Africa to the world.”
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