American banking regulations require users to complete a few extra steps before depositing their check through a mobile app. Many of our users were not aware of them and the checks they were trying to deposit were being rejected.
In addition, many users mentioned in their feedback that Varo’s check deposit UI was too confusing.
In addition to reading through user feedback and examining other banks’ mobile check deposit processes, we also sat down with our customer service team in order to pinpoint exactly where users were having difficulties.
We learned that the two main things preventing users from depositing their checks were that their checks weren’t signed and/or there was no endorsement (when users write “For mobile deposit only at…” under their signature.)
Our old check deposit flow forced the user to tap into a “Tips” menu in order to see the steps required to deposit a check.
In our new flow, we have the same instructions pop up during the image capture process so the user can make those changes before taking a photo of the check.
Our old check deposit flow was bogged down with unnecessarily long strings of text and dated-looking UI elements. Not only did these erode our credibility, but they didn’t convey information or next steps effectively.
In addition to rewriting the copy to be more concise and specific, we also replaced all of the UI elements with components from our new design system.
In the months that followed the release of our updated check deposit feature, we tracked a sharp decrease in the percentage of checks being rejected due to user error as well as an increase in the number of checks deposited overall.
