Fixing Repetitive, High-Friction KYC with Verifiable Credential Onboarding

The Problem

Financial services firms struggled with repetitive, expensive KYC processes. Customers were asked to submit the same documents repeatedly across different onboarding flows, while firms duplicated verification checks across suppliers and departments. This created slow, high-friction journeys that drove abandonment, inflated per-customer verification costs, and made compliance auditing harder. The organisation needed a way to validate identity once and reuse that verification securely across multiple services without exposing raw personal data.

The Solution

One of our digital squads implemented a verifiable-credentials model that allowed accredited KYC providers to issue signed identity credentials directly to a customer-controlled wallet. After completing a single identity validation, customers could selectively disclose only the required attributes—such as “verified identity: true”—to any relying financial service.

PII remained off-chain, while compliance and auditability were strengthened through cryptographic hashes stored on-chain, creating tamper-evident proof of verification. The system supported credential revocation, expiry, user-consent UX, and secure signature verification. We integrated the workflow into existing onboarding screens and CRM systems so relying parties could automatically verify credentials without introducing new friction for users.

The Impact

≈60% reduction in onboarding time for pilot cohorts
Significant decrease in per-customer verification cost through credential reuse
Lower abandonment during onboarding, increasing conversion into funded or active accounts
Stronger compliance posture with tamper-evident audit trails while keeping PII off-chain