How to onboard customers fast—without compromising compliance

For fintech founders and product leads, onboarding delays aren’t just frustrating—they’re expensive and a bane to customer experience. Lost conversions, growing fraud risk, and mounting compliance are all common side effects of inefficient identify verification (IDV) systems.

For instance, in March 2025, Block Inc., the parent company of Cash App and Square, agreed to a $40 million settlement with the New York State Department of Financial Services over failures in its anti-money laundering programs during a period of rapid growth. Similarly, in 2024, the National Bank of Belgium sanctioned money transfer service Wise for insufficient ALM controls, resulting in account freezes and urgent remedial action.

These high-profile regulatory crackdowns exemplify the operational and reputational risks that fintech companies face when IDV and KYC checks aren’t handled efficiently and compliantly from day one. But moving fast shouldn’t have to mean breaking things. To prevent such problems, fintechs need to invest in automated KYC and IDV solutions the preserve both speed and compliance, without incurring unnecessary costs or adding complexity.

The fintech dilemma: Speed vs. compliance

Speed and compliance are often competing goals, but they don’t have to be. On one hand, fintechs must grow quickly to secure market share, attract investment, and validate their business models in a highly competitive space. This growth is often predicated on the growing demand of seamless digital experiences, particularly during the customer onboarding stage. On the other hand, traditional KYC and AML compliance measures are time-consuming, expensive, and often need manual intervention. For startups in particular, the resulting bottlenecks can quickly lead to increased user drop-off.

Yet many fintech startups begin their journey relying on legacy verification processes and ad-hoc ALM and KYC solutions that:

• Slow verification processes: Manual document reviews can take hours or even days, which is far too long in an industry where customer expectations are shaped by real-time experiences.

• Increase operational costs: Traditional systems often require dedicated compliance staff, legal consultation, or external KYC vendors, all of which increase operational overhead.

• Result in poor user experiences: Manual checks—along with the resultant delays—don’t just take more time; they increase the risk of human error and can greatly frustrate customers.

Streamlining KYC and IDV for increased agility

To address these challenges, you need innovative solutions built with automation, smart workflows, and developer-friendly integrations in mind. These platforms are designed to reduce onboarding time, and cut down on unnecessary costs and complexity. For instance, automated verification systems can handle onboarding processes in seconds rather than hours by using advanced technologies like optical character recognition (OCR) for document parsing, biometric verification, and cross-referencing. That way, you can achieve speed without sacrificing security or compliance.

User experience is a major differentiator. Fintech startups can thrive by removing friction and making it easy for customers to access financial products. For example, a well-designed IDV workflow should be mobile-optimized, require minimal user input, and provide clear feedback at each onboarding step.

Deploying a next-generation KYC/IDV solution offers significant advantages for developers too, such as clearer API documentation, SDKs, secure sandbox environments, and responsive support. Since many fintech startups have lean engineering teams, they can benefit greatly by deploying a platform that allows them to deploy quickly and iterate with ease.

Startups that prioritize seamless, secure, and scalable verification processes from the outset can enjoy a host of long-term benefits. First, they enjoy higher onboarding conversion rates, by allowing new customers to verify their identities in under a minute, making them far more likely to complete the process. This also results in lower customer acquisition costs, since every new user adds direct value to the business.

Secondly, there’s the matter of brand trust—a fundamental competitive differentiator in an industry that’s built on trust. A smooth and professional IDV process—that doesn’t compromise on security—signals to new customers that the platform takes security and compliance seriously.

Finally, a robust verification system reduces internal compliance burdens, giving lean times more time to focus on aspects like product development and customer engagement. Moreover, with a scalable KYC/IDV infrastructure, fintechs can better prepare for global expansion, new product offerings, and future regulatory changes.

A smarter way forward for identity security

Modern identity verification no longer needs to be a trade-off between speed, cost, and compliance. By choosing a solution that’s tailored to the realities of startup life, fintechs can secure the frictionless onboarding experiences that today’s customers crave—and they can scale them as business expands.

TrustSwiftly is built with these principles at its core. Our platform offers the fast, scalable, affordable identity verification solution that fintech startups need to streamline their KYC operations with flexible APIs, real-time verification, and pricing that scales with your need.

Get started today with flexible and accurate identity verification