How Banco Azteca uses BlinkID to accelerate mobile user onboarding
June 26, 2023
Obstacle: Streamlining the user ID process when stay-at-home orders discouraged in-branch visits
Banco Azteca offers loans, savings accounts, investments, mortgages, and other related financial products and services to individuals and organizations in Mexico. Founded in 2002, Banco Azteca is Mexico’s largest digital bank and prides itself on being the premier, customer-centric, digital banking option in the region.
Like most industries, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation initiatives at Banco Azteca, which is part of Grupo Elektra, a subsidiary of Grupo Salinas. Consumers were staying home to comply with social distancing guidelines and needed their banking institutions to step up their digital capabilities to serve them from their homes – or wherever they were located.
As an organization committed to innovation, Banco Azteca used the global pandemic as a catalyst to redefine the onboarding process inside their digital banking app. In particular, they focused on the identity document scanning (capture and extraction) piece of the process, which is required to complete sign-up.
“Our business department needed a native mobile solution that could extract data from INE or Mexican IDs and passports accurately and efficiently,” said Francisco León, IT Director at Banco Azteca. “At that time, we were using another provider that was still in the development phase, but they didn’t compete with BlinkID in terms of speed, effectiveness, and end user satisfaction.”
Solution: Integrating BlinkID for seamless, digital onboarding
The Banco Azteca team wanted one central application that could automatically and reliably extract data from diverse ID types, could easily be implemented on mobile devices and web browsers, and could deliver the same data extraction quality as in-branch offices but in the shortest time possible.
“We needed a fast, customizable, effective solution that was intelligent enough to scan any type of identity document without being told beforehand,” said León. “Customer satisfaction is critically important to us, so it had to exceed our end user expectations. In addition, it had to support an array of platforms for our development teams – whether that’s Android or iOS devices, web or progressive web apps (PWAs).”
Ultimately, Banco Azteca selected BlinkID because of the quality of extraction and overall ease of use. BlinkID integrates into mobile and web applications to automate the identity document capture and extraction process across more than 2,500 documents from over 140 countries. Compared to alternative document scanning solutions, BlinkID is 5x faster, with zero document type selection or user interaction required. Users simply place their ID in front of their camera and Microblink’s technology gets to work.
Once the selection was made, the initial development for the mobile integration took two days. This was followed by an 8-week testing period to help ensure that customers had a seamless scanning experience, no matter where they were accessing the app. Whether users were connected to WiFi or using a cellular connection, the Banco Azteca team worked closely with Microblink’s technical support teams to optimize the native mobile SDKs for speedy performance.
Impact: Frictionless mobile sign-up means happier customers
Today, Banco Azteca is pleased to use BlinkID to scan more than 4 million INE IDs and passports every year. In addition, they’ve expanded their product suite to scan payment methods (credit or debit cards) using BlinkCard.
“Our customers are so impressed by the speed of the document scanning,” added León. “They’re really delighted by the implementation because it’s such a simple and easy solution to scan IDs.”
On the client side, the team has also enjoyed working with Microblink’s account and customer success teams.
“In the future, we’re looking to implement even more document types, not just IDs, to help with our onboarding and KYC process across our customer base. We’re also excited to be testing the identity document verification features, which uses the extraction technology and AI to identify whether a document is fraudulent or not.”