KYC as a service

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a process that identifies and confirms that a customer is who they say they are.
This case study discusses how Design can help prevent fraudulent account creation and usage.

Mockup screens

Project overview

OK Group specializes in developing blockchain technology and owns crypto exchanges OKX and Okcoin. OKG aims to own a dynamic and complete service-oriented architecture for all its brands, allowing Design to focus on experience and services instead of the complexity of the underlying logic.

The pilot of this project was its most critical service: Know Your Customer (KYC). Some of its achievements so far are:

3,100+
KYC users
64,9%
Conversion Rate, KYC 1

Role & process

I've worked with cross functional teams to guide the vision, strategy and solution design.

Design

Product Designers
Addie Meira, Rich Wang, Suni Yang

Lead Designer
Margaret Sommers

Design Program Manager
Erin Newell

Design System

Angie Badillo, Cody Williams, Jacob Morrison, Tabitha Kim

Content Designers
Alex Pompliano, Benji Tobi

Product Management

Ethan Hsiao, Jiehan Chen, Jiaxing Ding, Poe Nadi Hline, Rain Yu, Seah Jie Song

Engineering

Android
Changching Chi, Junqi Ma

Backend
Shijing Lu

iOS
Kae-Jer Cho, Jackson Siu, Mike Maguire

Web
Adrian Chan

Leadership

Business Analysis Manager
Tim Le

Chief Executive Officer
Hong Fang

Chief Experience Officer
David Geere

Chief Product Officer
Simon Ren

Founder
Star Xu

Head of Design
Kelly Battista

Chart of team sorted by countries: US, China, SG and BRATimeline of the project. 1 week to research. 5 weeks to design. 3 weeks to QA.Design framework

Deep dive into the Design process

Research

Data on Amplitude, communication channels, and competitors analysis made it possible to understand KYC pain points

Problem framing

UX outcomes & hypotheses about the KYC problem were some of the insights from UXR

Prototype

Wrapping user flows, trade-offs, and international cross-collaboration to provide the best experience

QA

Testing environment, Jira tickets, and working closely with Engineering team made it possible to find and fix bugs

Metrics

Track performance at an Executive Level and a Product Dashboard to understand the high level and detailed data

KYC mission: Anti-money laundering, Fraud detection, Misusage identificationHow KYC builds trust: Protection of users, Digital privacy laws, Periodic record updates

KYC, explained

As regulated financial services companies, crypto exchanges are required to identify the users on their platforms - and Know Your Customer (KYC) is just the way to do so once it confirms that customers are who they say they are. 

This multi-step process is one of the first things users see when signing up for a new account. Before users can fully use crypto exchange services, they must provide personal information over several screens.

KYC helps prevent the creation and use of fraudulent accounts - a massive problem in the crypto world - besides improving customer transparency and building customer trust.

Research

Data

Amplitude shows that since January 2021, +239k users have completed signed up at Okcoin, but only 30% have started the KYC1 flow. Of those who started, 89% successfully finished the flow.

Also, on the first seven days after signing up, users weren't perform actions like trading (17,9%) or buying crypto (5,85%).

Market Analysis

Okcoin hired a third party to run a competitor analysis from crypto exchanges, which made it possible to understand that the most prominent players in the market have two KYC approaches:

Standard onboarding, where users have to go through all the identity verification and authentication steps in one go. Deposit and trade are only available after this.

Progressive onboarding, where users can access the app with restricted actions while identity isn't verified. It also allows user to pause their onboarding if needed.

User feedback

By checking communication channels, PMS and I found out both Okcoin and OKX had KYC related problems, such as ID scan and instability of vendor's system.

Insight: Problem Statements

Together with the PMS, I got to write some hypothesis about KYC problems

As a retail investor, I want to understand why I am providing my personal information so I can have confidence to provide them to your platform
Problem: KYC's guidance isn't clear, making users feel spooky about sharing personal information

As a retail investor, I want to have a quick verification time so I can start trading right away
Problem: App's current vendor (Jumio) has long delay when there is spike in volume, which causes backend issues

As a retail investor, I want to be able to restore pre-populated personal information, so I don't need to start the verification process from scratch
Problem: The entered information is not saved in the system, so users have to enter it again if they decide to leave the flow before finishing it

Insight: UX Outcomes

I feel safe giving my information to Okcoin
I am happy for having my profile verified so fast and easy
I feel relief I don't have to resubmit my personal information

Data from AmplitudeKYC top issues: rejection, ID upload, change provided info, approval pendingBinance, Coinbase, Crypto.com and Kraken have progressive onboarding

User flows

After the lead PM structured the architecture, the Design Team started developing the prototype. This helped me identify error cases and determine the best path for business goals.

Once crypto jurisdiction differs for each country, we've had to work with six scenarios. For instance, the US requires Social Security Number, while European countries ask for proof of address.

Around 2% of users that undergoes the KYC process provide information that matches with names on a sanctions list. These users are required to go through the Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) Program to prove their identity and ensure that the heightened financial crime risk presented by the customers is addressed.The team decided to move forward with the first option to provide the same experience to all OKG products, allowing us to compare metrics in the future.

US KYC 1 flow
Generic KYC 1 flow: name, address, dob, nationality, idGeneric KYC 2 flow"confirm KYC 1 infos, ID and facial scanKYC 2 SG: Source of funds, occupationEDD EU: original and destination of assets and wallet
Screen mockupTypographyDifferent input fields

Design playground

OKX started to prototype before Okcoin, so we had to deal with two starting points:

OKX screens, where the Lead Product Designer applied the Okcoin Design System to each screen designed by OKX.

User flows, where I've designed screens having user flows and current onboarding screens as a basis.

This highlight our trade-off: building for speed vs. scale which made us ask: can we translate current styles to the new flow, or should we design for the best scaling system?

The team decided to move forward with the first option to provide the same experience to all OKG products, allowing us to compare metrics in the future.

Cross-Collaboration

Most of the communication between the squad was asynchronous, through Figma, group channels, and a stand-up board document. We've also had

Catch-up meetings between Product Management, Design, and Engineering from Okcoin and OKX.

Working sessions at least twice a week, which mainly included Product Designers, Content Designers, and the Design System team

Agreements

Some of the results of the cross-collaboration were

Implementation of address autocomplete having street address as a reference to prefill city, state, and postal code.

Display clear guidance about proof of address requirements.

Because the team was focused on the MVP, it was decided that the App would use a vendor to run ID and facial scans instead of building the scanning system internally.

It also was decided that the App would only allow the upload of image files, leaving PDF for the next iteration.It also was decided that App would only allow upload of image files, leaving PDF for next iteration.

QA

I was the only designer who helped map bugs in the testing environment for iOS, Android, and web versions.

The workflow was (i) Test feature in the dev-environment, (ii) Find bugs, (iii) Describe it at a Jira ticket by adding a screenshot and actual/ expected behavior, (iv) Align priority with dev, (v) Retest to check if the bug was fixed.

Screen mockupLark commentFigma cursors
Mockup screens
3,1k+
Total amount of users
64,9%
Conversion Rate, KYC 1
4m 2s
Completion time, KYC 1
1,97k
Success rate, KYC 1
94,1%
CTR, KYC 2
28,9%
Conversion R., KYC 2
1m 50s
C. time, KYC 2
407
Success rate, KYC 2

Next steps

Iterate
I have written a few ideas that can improve the users. For instance, adding a card about unfinished KYC to the App's homepage can provide artificial progress toward a goal, motivating users to complete the task (Zeigarnik Effect).

Develop services
Provide eligibility status for different types of transactions (eg. crypto to crypto, fiat to crypto) based on trader's current location and not just residence.

Takeaways

MVP is your friend
When time is short, working with a more plain and feasible version can make everyone's job more straightforward. Aligning ground rules or design goals (such as limitations, technical requirements, and focused priorities) can help guide the design.

Know your stakeholders
Acknowledging what people are essential for the project and who makes the final decisions is always critical. Once crypto jurisdiction changes according to each country, getting Compliance involved in every stage was significant.

Nothing great is built alone

If you have an idea in mind or just want to make a new friend, feel free to ping me!