5 steps to a high-converting signup with the help of open banking

Building your signup experience is high stakes. According to new research from YouGov and TrueLayer, 4 in 10 people in the UK start creating an online account, but don’t complete it.

That’s 40% of your marketing spend gone before you’ve seen any revenue. 

But if you can get your user through signup and on to make their first deposit, more than half are likely to go on to use your platform. 

In this blog post, we’ll share some of our key research findings, including the triggers causing customers to drop off, benchmarks for a good signup experience and five ways open banking technology can help. 

The signup challenge

The signup challenge is keenly felt in industries like financial services, crypto and iGaming, where strict KYC, regulatory and compliance requirements mean you have to collect and verify more information about new customers.

Delivering a slick signup experience in this context is a challenge – and something that even the biggest brands struggle with. I’ve seen big, well-known brands in these industries with signup flows approaching 40 screens.

The outcome is almost always poor conversion. 

Where are most people dropping off? 

According to our research with 1,274 UK customers of financial services, iGaming and cryptocurrency platforms, identity verification and payment are the most precarious stages of signup.

And the biggest triggers for a new customer to abandon signup are:

• asking them to enter information manually at these points (eg their email address, or payment account details)

• making them wait too long to be verified

Asking new customers to input information and data manually is an example of friction which can cause drop off in the moment. It can also create other problems downstream with data quality. More manual input fields means:

• higher chance of errors creeping in which can increase customer support overheads later on

• higher risk of fraud, since you’re more susceptible to bad actors creating multiple accounts, for example to abuse bonus offers

What does a good signup experience look like? 

Our survey reveals a few important benchmarks to bear in mind when designing your signup journey: 

Account creation should take no longer than 10 minutes (five in iGaming)

• Most people (73%) are only willing to spend 10 minutes or less before giving up. Almost all our respondents said they would abandon creating an account if it took longer than 30 minutes.

• People signing up for an iGaming account are less patient, with 6 in 10 players (58%) only willing to spend up to five minutes.

• Ways to reduce signup time include: collecting only the information you need right away and leveraging technology like open banking that reduces manual input (more on that below).

For best conversion verify users within 30 minutes

• Most people (86%) are not willing to wait more than 24 hours for their account to be approved.

• But even verifying your users within 24 hours will likely result in significant churn: 1 in 2 people said they would only wait up to 30 minutes before deciding not to return.

• Consider your risk-based approach: can you use thresholds and personalisation to trigger enhanced due diligence checks – which are often high friction – after a user is signed up? 

Crack the first deposit to turn more visitors into active customers.

• 1 in 2 people said they were likely to continue to use a platform after the first deposit (and 1 in 4 said they were very likely).

• Consider which tasks can go after first deposit to maximise conversion – especially if those tasks involve manual uploading of ID documents for example. 

How can open banking technology help you?

Here at TrueLayer, we’ve helped hundreds of companies build better signup and payment experiences with open banking. Here are five ways open banking can help. 

1. Minimise data input 

   Almost a quarter of people in our research said they’ve abandoned creating an account in the past when asked to manually enter information like their name, address and date of birth. More than a third have done so when asked to enter payment information. 

   Open banking can help you reduce manual data entry in both cases by connecting you to a user’s bank directly, to fetch information like name of the account holder, or take a payment.

   With an open banking payment, there’s no need to manually key in account numbers or sort codes. Instead users select their bank from a list, authenticate with biometrics and authenticate the payment – all via your app.

2. Maximise security 

   Fear over data security is a top reason why people abandon signup, mentioned by a third of people in our research.  

   Open banking payments can better protect you and your customers from fraud, since data input is minimised (see above) and no sensitive details are shared in the transaction. 

   Carrying out simple checks through the bank could also help to reassure customers: 6 in 10 people in our research admitted they were more likely to trust a verification process if it were done through their bank – rather than by manually scanning documents, which are verified by third party companies.

3. Combine payment and account creation stages 

   What if you could collapse the payment and account creation stages into one simple step?

   Here at TrueLayer,  we help customers do just that with Signup+. Powered by open banking, it speeds up KYC-compliant onboarding with one quick deposit from a user’s online bank – so new customers can get started gaming, trading, or buying crypto right away. 

   Signup+ works by pulling bank account data, i.e. sort code and account number, through open banking and matches it with other bank-sourced identity data (eg user name, address and date of birth). This allows you to auto-populate signup forms, securely authenticate your users and instantly take an initial deposit. 

4. Speed up verification 

   Verification requirements vary by industry and country, but often businesses need to confirm the account creator is who they say they are or is of age to use the platform.

   Open banking APIs enable you to verify the name of the account holder and can accelerate enhanced due diligence checks like source of income and affordability. 

   At TrueLayer we supplement standard open banking data, matching a user’s account number and sort code to bank-sourced identity data. We then return name, address and DOB to you – so you can carry out any additional KYC checks. 

   Communicating to your web visitors that your verification process is instant could be a useful marketing message – more than half of respondents in our research said they were likely to choose a platform that could instantly verify them, and three quarters said that the time it takes to receive a verification decision was a very important factor when deciding on a platform. 

5. Offer instant payouts 

   Providing an instant payouts feature and communicating this at signup could help you to convert more customers.

   3 in 4 people in our survey said instant withdrawals are an important factor in their decision to sign up to a platform. In iGaming, the number was even higher: 85% of players said instant withdrawals are important, with half calling them very important.

   Providers like TrueLayer combine open banking account verification with the fastest payment rails available to enable instant bank payouts for merchants in igaming, cryptocurrency and financial services. 

To access the full findings of our research with YouGov on customer onboarding, download the report.

Signup made simple with TrueLayer 

Signup+ from TrueLayer combines account creation with making a payment. Powered by open banking, it speeds up KYC-compliant onboarding with one quick deposit from a customer’s bank – so they can get started right away. Learn more