Finpal was paying good money for installs that vanished at a single screen. Here's how redesigning the KYC step — not the ad campaigns — lifted install-to-activation by 61% and brought CAC payback inside 9 months.
Finpal
Consumer personal finance & payments app
Steep KYC drop-off
68% of installs abandoned onboarding at the identity-verification step
5 months
Onboarding CRO + activation analytics sprint
Onboarding CRO
Funnel analytics, UX redesign, A/B testing
Finpal's paid installs were healthy and cost-per-install looked fine on every media dashboard — but only a fraction of installed users ever became activated, meaning they linked a bank account and completed a first transaction. Session recordings pointed at one exact spot where almost everyone stalled: the KYC step, where users were asked to photograph identity documents through a clunky in-app camera flow, with no indication of how many steps remained or why the data was even being collected. Support tickets confirmed it — users assumed the upload had frozen and simply closed the app. Every rupee spent acquiring that install had already been spent by the time it disappeared.
Analyzed session recordings and heatmaps across every onboarding screen and isolated KYC as the single largest point of drop-off by a wide margin.
Rebuilt the flow around fewer fields per screen, plain-language instructions, and a visible progress indicator so users knew exactly how much was left.
Added auto-capture guidance and real-time image-quality feedback so a document was rarely rejected without the user knowing why, on the spot.
Ran the redesigned KYC flow against the existing flow across live new installs before committing to a full rollout.
Built push and email sequences targeted specifically at users who started but didn't finish KYC, with a direct link back to their exact step.
Tracked activation and CAC payback by acquisition channel and install cohort, and fed the findings back into media buying decisions.
The highest-leverage fix wasn't a bigger media budget. It was three screens deep in a flow nobody had looked at in a year. Redesigning KYC produced more activated users for the same acquisition spend than any campaign change could have.
The redesigned KYC flow alone lifted the share of installs that go on to become activated, revenue-generating users by 61%.
Down from well over a year, since acquisition spend is no longer being lost on installs that never activate.
A friction-reduced flow with clearer instructions and faster document upload recovered the majority of the drop-off.
"We kept throwing more budget at the top of the funnel because that's the number that's easy to look at. The real problem was three screens deep, on a KYC flow we'd basically stopped looking at. Once we fixed it, the same install budget produced 61% more activated users and our CAC payback dropped under nine months. It's the cheapest growth we've ever bought."
Activation and funnel completion figures come from Finpal's in-app product analytics, tracked per install cohort. CAC payback is calculated against blended acquisition cost and average revenue per activated user, measured monthly from the client's finance team. Timeframe and starting baseline stated above, as with every case study we publish.
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