AI provides automated verification guidance to 75% of onboarding businesses, dramatically reducing delays and support case resolution times.
Revolutionizing Customer Onboarding with Intelligent Automation
For any platform, customer onboarding is a make-or-break moment. Delays and friction don't just frustrate users—they lead to lost revenue and increased support costs. At Dwolla, we recognized an opportunity to transform this critical process. By developing an AI-powered system, we're improving our own operations while giving our clients a powerful competitive advantage: a faster, smoother and more reliable onboarding experience for their customers.
Recognizing an Opportunity for Innovation
Business VCR (Verified Customer Record) verification has long presented opportunities for enhancement across the financial services industry. When businesses encounter nuanced situations during onboarding—such as providing a business address when a controller's home address was required—they often need additional guidance to navigate the process successfully.
Traditionally, this guidance involved a communication flow where businesses would contact the onboarding platform (our client), who would then reach out to our team for clarification before relaying information back to the end user. While this process worked, we recognized an opportunity to dramatically improve the experience for everyone involved.
Complex Know Your Business (KYB) requirements, with their multiple factors and nuanced scenarios, presented a particularly compelling use case for AI enhancement. We saw this as a chance to leverage modern technology to create a more seamless, efficient experience that would benefit our clients while reducing support volume for their teams.
Our goal was to transform this into a competitive advantage—delivering instant, accurate guidance that would set our clients' platforms apart in the market.
The Solution: AI-Powered Intelligence
To address the VCR verification challenge, our team implemented an AI-powered recommendation system. The solution was designed with flexibility and adaptability at its core, offering a more responsive approach than traditional rule-based systems.
"My inspiration for this project came directly from an AWS Bedrock workshop," explained a member of Dwolla's development team. "Interacting with Bedrock Agents via code was a lightbulb moment—I realized we could solve our #1 support case with AI. The ability to provide nuanced, contextual guidance offered a more agile way to handle the dynamic aspects of VCR verification."
Working with AWS, we developed a cloud-native AI solution that intelligently analyzes VCR verification data and provides actionable recommendations. The system integrates seamlessly with our existing infrastructure while maintaining the security standards required for financial services applications.
The system also operates automatically in the background, triggering intelligent analysis when VCR verification issues arise. It provides risk-assessed recommendations to help businesses resolve verification challenges quickly and accurately.
Implementation Excellence
Here's how we brought this AI-powered vision to life:
Intelligent Analysis Engine: Our system follows step-by-step instructions to provide consistent data analysis.
Seamless Integration: The solution connects securely with existing internal systems, providing agents with the context needed for accurate recommendations without disrupting established workflows.
Scalable Infrastructure: The entire supporting infrastructure was built using modern cloud-native approaches, creating a repeatable and testable deployment that serves as a valuable template for expanding AI capabilities across other use cases.
Advanced AI Capabilities: The underlying AI technology was selected for its performance and cost-effectiveness in handling business verification tasks, with the ability to understand complex contexts while maintaining appropriate controls for financial services applications.
Results: Transforming Customer Experience Through Intelligent Automation
The implementation of Dwolla's AI-powered VCR recommendation system has delivered measurable improvements in the verification process:
Near Real-Time Feedback: Businesses now receive recommendations on the next steps almost instantly, significantly reducing delays and improving their onboarding experience.
Reduced Risk Team Workload: By automating the initial stages of verification for a large percentage of cases, risk teams can now focus their expertise on more complex and nuanced issues.
Improved Efficiency: Approximately 75% of businesses now receive an automated recommendation, transforming what was previously our top support request into a largely automated process that benefits both clients' customers and their support teams.
Builds a Stickier Product: A seamless, modern onboarding experience improves business brand reputation and user satisfaction. Happier users lead to higher retention and a stronger, more competitive product.
Lessons Learned: Key Insights from AI Implementation
The journey to successful AI automation provided valuable lessons that extend beyond the immediate technical implementation. We learned:
Iterative Development is Crucial: The most significant improvements in system accuracy and consistency emerged through structured refinement processes. What began as basic instruction sets evolved into comprehensive operational guides, with clarity and structure driving predictability in AI behavior.
Clarity and Structure Drive Results: Systems structured with clear, detailed instructions and concrete examples made it so that a team member unfamiliar with a project can understand the intended outcomes and reasoning processes. This clarity translates directly to more predictable and reliable AI behavior.
Collaborative Success: Guidance from technology partners accelerated the learning curve and helped achieve desired outcomes faster, demonstrating the value of leveraging expert knowledge in specialized areas.
Powering the Future of Payments with AI
Our investment in AI isn't just about technical advancement—it's about removing barriers to enterprise growth. By solving persistent verification challenges, we provide our clients with more than just a payments platform; we provide a strategic advantage.
What does this mean for enterprises?
✓ You can launch faster.
✓ You can convert more users.
✓ You can reduce operational drag.
Choosing Dwolla means choosing a partner capable of using technology like AI to help transform payments infrastructure into a growth engine, not a bottleneck.