White labelFinancial services

ID verification

Making mandatory verification survivable for first-time digital users

A nationwide financial institution needed more wallet signups without removing a single regulatory requirement. Symph audited the registration, identity verification, and security flows, then proposed where the friction could actually be cut.

We keep this client’s name private. The client is real, and so is the system.

At a glance

A user experience audit and process optimisation proposals across registration, identity verification, and security workflows

Client: A nationwide non-banking financial institution operating a regulated digital wallet
Industry: Digital financial services
Status: Advisory engagement.
Engagement: UX audit and process optimisation, alongside related wallet engineering work

The challenge

Compliance sets the requirements. Conversion pays for every one of them.

Identity verification is mandatory
The requirements cannot be removed, only sequenced and presented better.
Every step is an exit
Document upload, selfie capture, and verification waits each give a new customer a reason to stop.
Many customers are new to digital finance
A flow that reads as standard to a product team can read as a wall to a first-time user.
Security adds friction by design
Authentication, device checks, and transaction confirmation protect the customer and slow them down.
Silent waiting is the worst kind
A verification step with no visible status leaves the customer assuming failure.

How we built it

Symph worked in three steps, each one building on the last.

Audit before redesigning
Symph examined the registration, identity verification, and security workflows as a customer experiences them, to find where people actually stop rather than where the team assumed they did.
Separate the mandatory from the inherited
Requirements set by regulation were held fixed. Steps that existed by habit or legacy design were identified as the available surface for optimisation.
Propose sequenced optimisations
Recommendations focused on reducing non-required steps, ordering required steps so customers reach value sooner, and making verification status visible instead of silent.

Modules

01
Customer registration flow
The signup path a new wallet customer moves through.
02
Identity verification workflow
Mandatory know-your-customer document and identity checks.
03
Security workflows
Authentication, device, and transaction confirmation steps.
04
Related wallet engineering
Separate engagements covering payment gateway, wallet features, cashback and referral, and third-party wallet integration.

Delivery model

01
Advisory engagement
The deliverable was an audit and a set of process optimisation proposals, not a build.
02
Separate engineering engagements
Related wallet development ran as its own work.

How it’s built

Proven architecture

Where Symph builds wallet features, it works on a cloud stack designed for security, reliability, and easy maintenance.

Secure by default

Recommendations were made inside the client’s regulatory obligations, never by weakening identity verification or authentication. Symph follows OWASP-aligned practices and the Philippine Data Privacy Act.

AI-native delivery

Symph’s engineers build with AI coding tools like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, which shortens the path from an accepted recommendation to a tested change.

The result

A complete audit of the onboarding path
Registration, identity verification, and security workflows were reviewed end to end.
Friction separated from obligation
The audit distinguished steps required by regulation from steps that were simply inherited.
No security tradeoff proposed
Every recommendation sat inside the client’s compliance requirements.
A growing partnership
Symph’s wallet work has spanned several engagements with the same client.