Case Study: Olacabs & Ola Money — KYC Verification

3 min readMay 27, 2018

RBI declared it was compulsory for all digital wallet users to complete KYC verification before 31st December 2017. This deadline was then pushed back to 28th February 2018. Following is a run down of how this project was thought about, designed, executed in initial 1 month and then 3 days.

The Problem

Reserve bank of India had mandated all Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) ask users to complete KYC. For transactions as low as Rs. 10,000. Failing to which, the users won’t be able to add money to wallets and pay for services. Ola Money is not only a wallet for cab ride payments but also for Recharging prepaid phones, bill payments for mobile bills, utility bills such as electricity and water, DTH recharges, metro travel card recharges etc. Ola Money can also be used to pay for local services eg: at Petrol Pumps, Tea/Coffee shops and local stores.

We wanted to inform users to complete their KYC verification before 31st December 2017. Maintain the urgency while keeping the experience frictionless.

Solution

We had a head start on this. While this was announced in October 2017, the rules and regulations kept changing. The flow had to adapt to the changing rules.

Basic KYC — The most basic form of KYC verification. Valid for 1 year. Max limit of Rs. 10,000 per month. Transfers to Bank and Individuals not allowed.

E-KYC — Aadhar OTP based verification. Valid for 1 year. Max limit of Rs. 1,00,000 per month, Rs. 2,00,000 per year. Transfers to Bank and Individuals allowed.

Full KYC — Submit proof of Address and Proof of Identity documents and manually verify the documents to get verified for lifetime. No limit whatsoever on transactions. Full access.

Full KYC was the ultimate goal. E-KYC was the most preferred option as the user would get full access to the wallet features without any friction. Basic KYC was the easiest. We designed it to be the easiest, go to option. I personally felt that this whole feature was made too complex by adding these various pieces. A user doesn’t care what Basic, e-KYC and Full KYC would mean. He just wants to get done with it so that the wallet is not blocked.

Explorations: High fidelity wireframes

We envisaged it as a quick, web view built, structure where the user selects the type of KYC. Inputs details. Proceeds to completion.

Sampling flows of how KYC would work (Early versions)

Urgency and Quick turn around

While explorations continued and multiple solutions were being worked upon, sense of urgency started to grip. Time was running out and construct had started looking stable.

Shipping

Final version shipped was a much simpler and lighter variant. A simple landing page where user selects the ID and enters data. Full KYC was dropped for now and E-KYC was to be handled by an authorized service provider (Fino).