Nobody opens a banking app excited to verify their identity.
They open it because they need something — to send money, to save, to get paid. The KYC process is just in the way. And yet, how you design that process determines whether someone trusts you with their finances or deletes the app before they even get started.
I've spent years designing onboarding flows for financial products. The biggest mistake I kept seeing — and sometimes making — was treating KYC as a compliance checkbox rather than a design problem.
Here's what that looks like in practice: a wall of form fields, legal copy nobody reads, an ID upload that fails three times, and a "we'll get back to you" screen with no timeline. The user has handed over their passport and has no idea what happens next. That's not onboarding. That's an interrogation.
Trust in fintech isn't built through brand colors or a friendly illustration. It's built through clarity. Tell people exactly what you're asking for and why. Show them where they are in the process. When something goes wrong, explain it in plain language — not an error code.
The best KYC flows I've designed had one thing in common: they made the user feel like the product was on their side, not screening them.
A progress bar that actually moves. A camera UI that guides you to the right angle instead of just failing. A confirmation screen that says "you're done, here's what happens next" instead of leaving people in the dark.
Small things. But in a product built on trust, small things are everything.