How Glover avoids User Churn with Okra's Identity APIs

Identity verification is usually a point for user churn during the onboarding process.- Onyedikachi, Product Manager, Glover.

In 2018, data breaches across the world exposed 5 billion records. For context, five billion records were available for misuse. So, some hacker with those records could pretend to be someone else on a platform with poor identity verification processes.

Data breaches and other attacks have made it increasingly hard for businesses to verify that people are who they say they are. Unfortunately, the fix for this comes with lengthy user experiences that frustrate legitimate customers.

For example, some companies take as much as 48 hours to verify the identity of their customers before they’re fully onboarded. The opportunity cost for such long verification processes is user churn.

Onyedikachi Nwabugwu, Product Manager at Glover, puts this into context with this statement:

“Identity verification is usually a point for user churn during the onboarding process. Asides from the scare of giving out personal information, the unreliability of the available services leaves users discouraged after the first try.”

What is Glover?

Glover is a technological platform created to simplify the e-commerce experience for every African youth, starting with Nigerians. Glover has 3 distinct service offerings:

• Giftcards - The Giftcard service further enhances the gifting culture of Nigerians. Here individuals can buy and sell gift cards from over 20 countries around the world. The next update is set to grant Nigerians access to local gift cards as well.
• Refill - The Refill service enables citizens to pay their utility bills with ease. Some of the options available are airtime top-up, data and cable TV subscriptions, and prepaid electricity.
• Airtime2Cash - The Airtime2Cash feature provides an automated and secure way to convert excess airtime to monetary funds. And transactions are secured end-to-end.

The onboarding challenge for Glover

Glover’s product offerings improve the global shopping experience for young Africans. However, that comes with the challenge of securely verifying users and locking out fraudsters, while maintaining a good user experience.

Before Okra, Glover explored several unreliable services that hampered its expansion goals. Expansion aside, poor identity verification comes with some expensive damages.

Risks of poor identity verification

The first risk is reputational damage. Worry sets in if customers are convinced that anyone can sign up on a platform without proper verification. This leads customers to worry that their identity can be compromised and used for transactions without their approval.

Secondly, there are expensive fines that come with being accused of abetting fraud. In 2019, a bank was fined by UK and US authorities to the tune of $1 billion for poor money-laundering controls. One way to assess the credibility of a customer is through proper verification.

Thirdly, when fraud occurs, agencies enforce chargebacks which affect the bottom line, as chargebacks are made on settled transactions that might be hard to reclaim. Hence, it is important to accurately verify customers before they’re onboarded to use your platform.

For all of these reasons and more, setting up a thorough and error-free identity verification system is important. But as stated earlier, it can be difficult to enforce a thorough verification system while maintaining a good user experience.

The main drawback of a slow identity verification process is user churn.

How Okra powers identity verification

To address this challenge, we prioritise user security and user experience at the same time. With Okra’s Identity APIs, companies like Glover verify their users within seconds. All data fields are encrypted to ensure no one can access the data, even in an unlikely attack.

According to Onyedikachi, “Thankfully, Okra’s identity verification service has relieved us of the user churn concern that comes with identity verification. Our users now enjoy a seamless onboarding process.”

With Okra, product managers like Onyedikachi can worry less about drop-offs at the point of verification. That way, they get to focus on what matters more, like expansion and user growth!

How can we help your business?

Whatever financial product you are looking to build, we will step in to make things digital within minutes. Check out the product suite and find what you need here. And if you’d love to see a demo, we have you covered; book your exclusive session here. Let’s build the unimaginable together!