Customer Verification for a Fintech App
Overview
Redesign of the customer verification process that increased completion rate and drastically cut down on users abandoning the form.
My Contribution
Product Research UX/UI Design Usability Testing
The Team
1 x Product Manager 1 x UX Designer 1 x Software Engineer 1 x Tester
The Company
GCash
Process
One of my first projects in GCash was to redesign the know-your-customer (KYC) verification experience. Back then, it was a clunky web form that caused a lot of user frustration. It was my job to design and improve the flow for the mobile app.
We redesigned the experience using face matching technology and made a lot of usability improvements, drastically cutting down on friction and user drop-off.
The Challenge
Know-Your-Customer or customer verification is a requirement of financial institutions regulated by the Bangko Central ng Pilipinas (BSP). While GCash did have a web form for users to do KYC, it was not optimized for mobile phones and was very tedious, resulting in low completion rates and high drop-off.
The original KYC web form did not have an optimized experience and had a steep drop-off rate.
The Design Process
The main steps of the verification process were:
- Take a photo of a valid government ID
- Take a photo of yourself
- Fill up the form
- Agree to the terms and conditions
Identify Pain Points and Opportunities
To understand the bottlenecks in the process, we conducted several timed user tests and focus group discussions to find out the customers' pain points. From there, we designed several prototypes, changing the order of steps and conducting usability tests.
Pain Points
- Users don't know they need a government ID to complete the form.
- Video call to verify is a hassle.
- Form is long and tedious to fill up.
Opportunities
- Tell users what they'll need to have on hand (their government ID) upfront.
- Use proprietary face-matching technology to replace video calls.
- Optimize the form to cut down input time.
Strategies
Increase conversion from the first page
The first page of the verification process was the most critical because it had to inform the user of two things:
- The benefits. Why should I get verified?
- The requirements. What do I need to do? How long will it take?
Letting users know they needed a valid ID before they started the process reduced the chances of drop-off, so that had to be highlighted in the info page. The page also showed how long it would take to complete the form (around 5 minutes) to let users know it could be finished in one sitting.
The information page highlights the benefits (unlock top features) and the requirements (they need a government ID). It also highlights how easy it is to complete by guaranteeing users can finish the process in 5 minutes.
Design a low-friction form
The form was also optimized to be as easy as possible to fill up.
We did A/B testing varying the sequence of steps to determine which was the most ideal.
To further improve convenience of the form, some fields were pre-filled using the information from the government ID photo from the first step.
Results
Form submission rate increased from 29.8% to 42%.
By replacing the manual video call with face scanning, the application approval rate also increased from 3% to 56%.
A qualitative study was done one year after the launch of the in-app verification feature to review customer insights. Respondents compared our verification flow with those of other top mobile wallets in the Philippines.