Nickel: Offering fast and simple client onboarding while optimizing costs

Challenge

Although Nickel already had SMS and two-factor authentication in place, they wanted to optimize costs, streamline the onboarding process (account signup) and efficiently communicate with their customers.

Since all of Nickel’s customers use mobile phones, the company decided to streamline onboarding through the use of two-factor authentication in the form of one-time PINs. As customers were performing sensitive financial transactions on the Nickel platform, the service had to be extremely reliable.

SMS communications presented the ideal way to inform clients about account usage (payment notifications), as SMS messages are extremely reliable and can even be used by consumers without internet access.

Nickel was seeking a single partner that could provide a solution for easier account activation, as well as help them keep their customers informed about their account activity while optimizing costs.

Solution

Nickel chose Infobip as its partner since they offered a tailor-made sales approach and a dedicated account team for 24/7 support.

Global 2FA SMS authentication (with Voice as a failover) was implemented to make Nickel’s onboarding process faster and simpler for customers, and to add an additional security layer to authorize larger transactions. The one-time PIN delivered to clients via SMS provides Nickel with the ability to verify users using just their mobile phones and without compromising the user experience. The automatic voice failover means successful and timely delivery was assured.

SMS is also deployed to notify customers of account changes and to reliably deliver transaction alerts. This enables clients to stay up-to-date in real time, which ensures they can easily keep track of their finances and remain updated on important account activities.

By using Infobip, Nickel was able to achieve optimized costs with a single, friendly account team that was available for implementation or troubleshooting at any time.

Result

With a happy and satisfied customer base, Nickel’s outstanding performance led to its acquisition by BNP Paribas in 2017. In 2018, the company crossed the 1-million-customer mark and has reported that 30-35,000 new accounts are being opened monthly.

Nickel was very impressed with the human approach Infobip took and how well they were taken care of by their account team. Infobip’s solutions also made it possible for Nickel to save on IT operating costs year-on-year.

With a distribution network consisting of more than 4,000 locations, Nickel plans to double its client base by 2020, and is now exploring other Infobip product offerings that could help them to further boost the company’s onboarding process.