Case Study · Fintech

elyps Cut Onboarding Drop-off by 25% - Without Changing a Single KYC Requirement

elyps is a French-Belgian neobank built to give everyday consumers Revolut-style cross-border banking. Weeks after launch, roughly 8 in 10 new sign-ups were abandoning onboarding at one screen. The fix wasn't easier compliance - it was better timing.

Role

Head of Product · 1st hire

Sector

Neobank · Fintech

Market

France & Belgium

Focus

Onboarding Activation

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80% → 60%

Onboarding churn at the pre-KYC screen

4 weeks

From insight to live experiment

+30%

Lift in overall Activation conversion across the engagement

The Engagement

This case study is one example from a full-time Head of Product engagement. Aleksander led product for elyps as its first product hire - owning the roadmap end to end, from onboarding and activation to the discovery practices behind them. The “Do it later” experiment below is a single, representative slice of that work.

The Situation

A compliance-heavy onboarding was quietly bleeding sign-ups

elyps needed KYC (Know Your Customer) verification to open an account - a legal requirement for any regulated neobank. But product analytics data revealed the huge onboarding churn wasn't spread evenly across the funnel. It was concentrated almost entirely on one screen: the step right before KYC started.

The obvious read was "KYC is too much friction, simplify it." But simplifying a regulated identity check isn't something you can just do. So instead of touching the compliance flow, the team went looking for the actual reason users were dropping off there - and found it wasn't the step itself.

Inside the Experiment

The “Do it later” pre-KYC flow

Test Card 30.09.2020 · 4-week test · Owner: Aleksander Uznański

We believe that

Allowing users to defer KYC to a more convenient time - and sending them a reminder at home - will reduce onboarding churn on the pre-KYC screen and increase KYC completion.

What we built

Added a “Do it later” CTA directly on the pre-KYC screen.
Redirected users who tapped it to a notification consent screen, explaining they'd get a reminder that evening.
Sent a push notification at 8pm local time with a deep link straight back to the KYC step.

What we measured

Pre-KYC step churn rate
KYC completion within 24 hours
Overall onboarding churn

Success criteria

Overall onboarding churn decreases by at least 10%.

“The main problem wasn't KYC itself - it was the context users tried to complete it in.”

What Happened

Churn dropped - and so did the pressure on compliance

Learning Card 1–30.09.2020

Result

Onboarding churn fell from roughly 80% to 60% - a 25% relative decrease. Notification opt-in rates rose too, because users finally had a clear, self-interested reason to say yes.

Insight

Giving users control over when they complete a sensitive step can meaningfully improve activation - without weakening compliance.

Decision

The “Do it later” flow became the default for every new user.
Notification consent screens now lead with the user's benefit, not compliance or marketing language.

Why This Matters For You

If one screen is where everyone disappears, the fix is rarely a shorter form

Most teams respond to a churn spike by trying to remove steps. That works sometimes - and it's off the table entirely when the step is a legal requirement, like KYC. The more durable fix is usually about when and how you ask, not what you ask. That reframe is the whole point of running a proper Test Card before you touch the product: it forces you to name the real hypothesis, not just the symptom.