Customer onboarding is the very first step on how customers make acquaintance with your digital bank. All the further steps and communications with your brand entirely depends on how easy, convenient, and smooth the onboarding process has been. In this article, we discuss how to ensure that your customer onboarding process is fast and simple without compromising security.

Give your customers immediate account access

AML/KYC procedures are mandatory for any fintech company, which means that you must gather the essential information about your customers and their identity. The company must perform different types of checks that are associated with identity, ID documents, payment information, and addresses etc. Each section requires filling in additional forms and attaching documents. As a result, customers need to spend a massive amount of time, and they may get frustrated. Because of poor customer experience and the lengthy onboarding process, many of them may even leave the site or app before accessing the account.

To make this process more pleasant for customers, your fintech company must ensure that you provide the access to their account with the minimum information submitted – e.g., name and surname, e-mail, phone. After accessing the account, the customer can analyse the functionality, User Interface and the overall experience. At the later stage to start operations, you can require the customer to finish filling out forms and submitting required documentation.

Divide the customer onboarding process into several steps

You can also split the customer onboarding process and require customers to fill in forms and submit documents at several stages. For the AML specialists, it means that they can approve documents step by step. For customers, it means that the processes related submission of financial information, address and identity verification is easy and smooth. After completing and submitting all the forms and required documents, the customer receives a confirmation in the internet-bank and can start accepting payments or performing other operations in the mobile app or web-banking.

When you divide the long, time-consuming process into several steps, it makes the process more enjoyable for customers. They can perform each action whenever they have energy and time. But do not forget to remind the customer to fill in all forms to start using the platform and operations fully. It is recommended not to give customers several weeks to fill in forms.

Roll out digital customer onboarding

Make the process as easy as possible and roll out digital onboarding! To comply with regulatory requirements, the company must perform several checks. Starting from ID document verification (e.g., integrity checks, authenticity checks, and database checks) and biometric checks (e.g., matching an ID with a selfie, liveness checks) to screening (e.g., scammer blacklists and third-party databases) and checking on Government registries. In the case of a company – KYB (e.g., UBO KYC/AML check), company AML checks, and verification based on corporate documents are required.

When performing everything manually, the process can take up to 1-3 days because it requires to verify the identity using different registries, blacklists and other online sources. It may result in frustrating customers and negative customer experience. There is a higher probability that customers abandon the account creation process. Data inconsistencies are another problem. Some resources can be invalid or deliver insufficient information as the company cannot afford to buy access to different registries. Human errors must be taken into account, as well.

The automatic customer onboarding process enables the fintech company to access all registries and databases and compare biometric information of a customer with an ID document in minutes or even seconds. Meanwhile, built-in AI helps verify the identity instantly.

Ultimately, the company can provide excellent customer experience because the customer doesn’t need to wait days to confirm the application. To make it more effective and efficient, there is a double-check available. It means that the company can combine the automatic check with the final manual confirmation.

Advapay has made the onboarding process fully digital and offers ready integrations with such well-known KYC/AML providers as Sumsub, Veriff and iSpiral. Gateways with these services are available through our Core Banking software, what means easier and faster integration.

Focus on omnichannel and Mobile-first

Nowadays, customers are fluent with multiple technologies and channels. Most of them aren’t ready to compromise and expect that the fintech company will provide the same level of service and customer experience on every device and channel. When it comes to onboarding, it is essential that customers can switch between different devices and access their onboarding application across all touchpoints. This means that back-end systems must have APIs with carefully defined product functionalities and configurations to make customers happy and provide access to the platform from any channel they want, especially mobile.

It can be explained by the fact that a smart mobile phone is the King, and now it has become an indispensable part of our life. Smartphones are something we always have with us. Therefore, when planning your business processes, project onboarding process, make sure everything is omnichannel – available both in a web browser and mobile application.


Advapay is a technology company providing the Digital Core Banking platform to empower fintech clients or digital banks to start their businesses and accelerate digital transformation. The platform delivers all essential functionalities, a front-to-back system and a set of tools to customise and bring new integrations. With Advapay, potential and existing customers can connect either to the cloud-based SaaS or on-premise software. Besides the technical infrastructure, the company provides business advisory and fintech licensing services. Interested to learn more, please drop us a message.

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