Our activation rate dropped as acquisition spend scaled. To fix this, we rebuilt the core payment and discoverability flows, which increased average subscriptions per user from 1.6 to 2.4 and lifted 7-day activation by 3%.
The checkout experience felt frankensteined. Users were bouncing between KYC, partnership promos, and we were conditioning them to care too much about the fee upfront.
The success screen felt anti-climactic. We needed to address the immediate user anxiety: Is my bill actually going to be paid on time? By highlighting the exact rewards earned and adding a branded Chexy piggy-bank animation, we replaced a basic confirmation screen with a definitive sense of completion.
We saw an 11% drop-off at KYC because we asked for high-friction info too late in the flow. We moved KYC to the beginning and stepped it out to feel much lighter, allowing 60% of users to pass the stage with no further action. For those who did drop off, we improved the first-time experience with a guided set-up list and a visual carousel of popular recipients to make their next steps completely frictionless.
Manual custom payee setup is a major point of friction. Introducing bill uploading and email forwarding drove a 21% activation rate, outperforming the 14–18% baseline. 86% of users understood the instructions, with the highest adoption in high-friction categories like professional services (23%).
To improve discoverability, we built a full-page search experience. This drove a 45-50% same-day activation spike during tax season, which directly correlated with users immediately setting up a second utility payment.