Session Replay for Fintech — Finding KYC and Onboarding Drop-Off

Short answer: fintech applicants mostly drop at the steps that send them away from the flow or ask for effort: OTP verification, document capture, video KYC, and bank linking. Build a funnel with each of those as a step, split it by device, and watch masked recordings of applicants who stopped. Most causes are technical or instructional, not a lack of interest.

Table of Contents

1. Why Fintech Onboarding Leaks
2. The Funnel to Build
3. Where Friction Hides
4. Recording Safely
5. What to Watch For
6. Key Takeaways

Why Fintech Onboarding Leaks

Regulation requires steps a normal signup does not have. Each one is an opportunity to lose an applicant who was ready to become a customer:

• Identity numbers entered by hand
• One-time passwords that arrive late
• Photos of documents taken on a phone
• Live video verification
• Handoffs to a bank, payment app, or third-party verification provider

Applicants who reach these steps have already decided to apply. Losing them here is expensive.

The Funnel to Build

1. Application started
2. Mobile number verified
3. Identity details submitted
4. Documents uploaded
5. Verification completed
6. Bank account or payment method linked
7. Account active

Send each as a custom event when the server confirms it:

deepsync("track", "kyc_documents_uploaded");

Split the funnel by device and by acquisition channel. A step that fails mainly on one browser or one operating system is a bug.

Where Friction Hides

Two of these deserve particular attention. Handoffs are invisible in most analytics: the applicant simply vanishes. In a recording you can see whether they came back and what state the page was in. Lost progress after a timeout is the single most frustrating experience in a long application.

Recording Safely

Financial onboarding screens are full of sensitive data, so set this up before recording anything.

• Inputs are masked by default. In DeepSync, passwords, payment fields, and text inputs are masked in the browser before anything is transmitted (PII masking).
• Mask what the page displays. Account numbers, balances, and names shown on screen need the masking class.
• Block document previews and verification frames entirely, so they are not recorded at all:

<div class="ds-block">
  <!-- uploaded ID preview or third-party verification frame -->
</div>

• Use consent-required mode and reflect recording in your privacy notice.
• Send only opaque IDs when identifying applicants.
• Review with your compliance team. Regulated firms have obligations beyond general privacy law, and this article is not legal advice.

Enterprise plans include data residency options and longer retention (plans).

What to Watch For

Open sessions that stopped at your weakest step and look for:

• Repeated taps on "resend OTP"
• The same field corrected several times
• Camera permission prompts dismissed, followed by a dead end
• Long idle periods during verification waits
• An error message outside the visible area on mobile
• JavaScript errors on the step (JS errors)
• Return from a handoff to an empty or expired form

Illustrative scenario. A lending app sees a large drop at document upload on Android. Recordings show the upload button opening a file picker instead of the camera on some devices, so applicants cannot find a photo they have not yet taken. Changing the input to request the camera resolves it.

More on the industry: DeepSync for fintech.

Key Takeaways

• Fintech drop-off concentrates at verification and handoff steps.
• Build a funnel with each regulatory step and split by device.
• Mask displayed data and block document and verification frames.
• Look for lost progress and failed returns from handoffs.

Conclusion

Applicants who abandon KYC wanted your product. The step that stopped them is usually fixable, once you can see it.

Start free with DeepSync.