Infobip > Case Studies > Nickel: Streamlining Client Onboarding and Optimizing Costs with Infobip

Nickel: Streamlining Client Onboarding and Optimizing Costs with Infobip

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Identity & Authentication Management
Networks & Connectivity - NFC

Applicable Industries

Finance & Insurance
Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation
Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Speech Recognition
Voice Biometrics

About The Customer

Nickel is a French company that was founded in 2014 with the vision to provide bank account and payment card access to everyone, at minimal cost, through non-traditional banking channels like tobacconists. Nickel’s ‘virtual banking’ business model is based on providing fast, simple service to its clients. The company is constantly fine-tuning its products to make the overall experience seamless for customers. This proposition proved extremely popular and in 2016, a new tobacconist was signing up to the initiative every two hours, with a new customer opening an account every 30 seconds.

The Challenge

Nickel, a French company founded in 2014, aimed to provide bank account and payment card access to everyone at minimal cost through non-traditional banking channels like tobacconists. The company's 'virtual banking' model was based on providing fast, simple service to its clients. However, Nickel faced a challenge in optimizing costs and offering reliable communications to enable faster and easier client onboarding. Despite having SMS and two-factor authentication in place, Nickel wanted to streamline the onboarding process 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. The service had to be extremely reliable as customers were performing sensitive financial transactions on the Nickel platform.

The Solution

Nickel partnered with Infobip, a company that offered a tailor-made sales approach and a dedicated account team for 24/7 support. Infobip's global two-factor SMS Authentication (2FA) and SMS communications with voice failover were 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 provided Nickel with the ability to verify users using just their mobile phones and without compromising the user experience. The automatic voice failover ensured successful and timely delivery. SMS was also deployed to notify customers of account changes and to reliably deliver transaction alerts. This enabled clients to stay up-to-date in real time, which ensured they could easily keep track of their finances and remain updated on important account activities.

Operational Impact

With the implementation of Infobip's solutions, Nickel was able to optimize costs and simplify the onboarding process. The use of two-factor SMS Authentication and SMS communications with voice failover not only made the onboarding process faster and simpler for customers but also added an additional security layer for authorizing larger transactions. The one-time PIN delivered to clients via SMS allowed Nickel to verify users using just their mobile phones, without compromising the user experience. The automatic voice failover ensured successful and timely delivery. Nickel was very impressed with the human approach Infobip took and how well they were taken care of by their account team. 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.

Quantitative Benefit