Nomod is a B2B fintech platform offering payment solutions for businesses and individuals. As part of our compliance with financial regulations, all new users are required to complete a Know Your Customer (KYC) process during sign-up. However, we noticed increasing user friction and a concerning drop-off rate during this step.

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Context

• What was Nomod’s product and value proposition at the time? Nomod helps SME merchants accept payments through links and invoices online and in person without needing any dedicated hardware. It also comes with team collaboration tools, role-based access controls, and analytics around sales volume.

• What was the problem with the existing onboarding or KYC experience? The onboarding experience back then was pretty lengthy and hard to complete. A lot of users dropped off because they didn’t know what documents they needed upfront. Plus, a good chunk of our users were freelancers or individuals who simply didn’t have some of the documents we were asking for so they couldn’t finish onboarding even if they wanted to. This led to increased support volume and frustration on both ends.

• What internal or external goals influenced the need to redesign this flow? Internally, our goals were to reduce drop-offs, balance compliance requirements while still bringing in valuable merchants, and ultimately increase processed volume through new customer activations. Externally, we wanted freelancers to be able to skip irrelevant requirements, and for enterprise merchants to breeze through KYC without confusion. We also aimed to make the whole thing feel foolproof with instant feedback, retry options, and better clarity throughout the process.

• What was the starting point, an existing flow or design it from scratch? We started with the existing flow—adding better tooltips, easier access to support, and refining the UX microcopy. Later on, we A/B tested that against a new, improved user flow that kept those same improvements but reduced the number of actions required to complete onboarding.

Two key user groups were struggling to complete onboarding:

1. Business users – These users often lacked clarity on what qualifies as valid business registration documents. Many uploaded blurry, irrelevant, or incomplete files due to vague prompts like "Upload Registration Certificate" without contextual guidance.
2. Individuals and freelancers – Since they aren’t formal businesses, many didn’t have trade licenses. Yet they were still prompted for such documents, causing confusion. Although a proof of address (like a utility bill or bank statement) was sufficient, this wasn't clearly communicated.

This led to:

• High drop-off rates during onboarding
• Users uploading invalid documents