NiyoX — Account opening review
This year’s IPL season before being cancelled/”Indefinitely paused” was interesting and entertaining. Some might argue on the quality of cricket, but one thing for sure, we had loads of Startups fresh with big money bags showing-off their ads during the IPL. We had all the Fantasy Game apps followed by the finance apps and online education app. Well many of us liked the “Indranagar ka Gunda” ad while many of you liked the Bitcoin ad by Coinswitch Kuber. For no particular reason the NiyoX app seemed quite interesting to me, not that the ad was great but since I work in a similar area it got my interest. Well to be honest the NiyoX ad was less annoying then the UPSTOX one. By the way I loved the CRED ads, however didn’t love the idea they wanted to read all my emails when i downloaded their app. Well that’s a long introduction lets start the NiyoX review.
First thing the name NiyoX works lot better than “Yono” ..Yawning.. what on earth does Yono mean? I am sure the name must have come from senior MD in SBI rather than a marketing creative. The name Niyo with X at the end conveys that its the next gen thing, overused but I will take it. Niyo.. Neo.. that totally conveys the digital message for all the Matrix fans out there.
Downloading from the App Store
Relatively easy to find on the iPhone app store, no confusion. So well done with the name again. I like the caption “Bank. Save. Invest”
App Size
App download size is 114.8 MB, which looks decent compared to ICICI Bank: 300 MB, DBS Digibank: 271.5 MB, Axis Bank : 73.5 MB
Preview
App Screenshots and the product information on the App Store also looks good and conveys good information. However I rarely see the preview images before downloading an app, but its always good practice to have some neat images, after all the first impression matters. Checkout Axis Bank app preview later.
Ready to Start
Neat Intro screen, with clear focus on how they intend to position this product “Savings” + “Wealth”. I get it NiyoX!
Side note, I will be furious if you try selling loans and credit cards.
Permission
Well time for some permissions, thankfully they want to send notification and do not want to read my contact list or access my photos. But I politely declined them!
Zero Balance
Focus on Zero Balance, again something important from a customer perspective as Banks in India tend to charge when balance is below a certain limit. Reduces the friction in customer’s mind, as no cost involved.
By the way like the Dog in the illustration, a great companion, reminds me of the Hutch ads.
Mutual Fund Savings
Again simple and clear messaging about mutual funds and why you should buy through them Well done!, Some times when you have full screen in front of you, you might be tempted to cramp a lot of information..
7% Rate of Interest
The Dog is back and promises to give you great returns.
7% seems too good, what’s the catch ? Well the first 100K you get 3.5% interest rate and any amount above that will give you 7%.
Finally I can “Get Started”, well i could have skipped these and gone straight to the next step.
Providing Details
Now comes the fun part, nice and clear instruction to provide the mobile number
Phone OTP Verification
Well they are trying to verify that I have the correct phone number.
The OTP is available on the number pad and i can just tap on that to enter the OTP, which I think is very user friendly. I hate when I have to look at the SMS and memorize the 6 digit number and then key-in. Yeah its difficult for me to remember random 6 digit numbers! I am sure there is some fancy term for this somewhere.
Whatsapp Updates Consent
They want to send me notifications on Whatsapp, good to see they have gone ahead with this from Day-1, well still need to see what kind of message they send.
However don’t like this screen, the design was flawless so far with neat pages with clear wording, now all of sudden a whatsapp consent with email verification text in the background.
Seems like “Someone” had his way and the “Whatsapp” feature was added after everything was built.
But at least they put that illustration on top to give some consistency from a UI perspective.
Email Verification
Effortless if you have a Gmail account. I like the fact they are verifying the email accounts. Email accounts are a great way to identify fraudsters. Products like emailage do a good job.
The other reason why I like the email verification is because there are banks like RBL which send transactions messages/OTP for some random customers to my gmail id. Not cool RBL !
Support
Ah now you can also see a little guy pop-up at the top right end. Bold black background text to draw attention which vanishes quickly.
I kind of like the support icon popping up at this stage, i think the first 2 steps are rather quite common and easy. The NiyoX team felt it starts getting difficult from here and started introducing some help.
This is indeed a difficult question about fine balance between helping the customer and not swamping your support with unnecessary queries.
Starting again now
Well not really sure about this page here, My initial reaction was, “oh!, my account opening starts now”, which I thought I had already started. But never mind.
But again, very clear communication on what documents I would need, but Niyo Money Account and Saving “No Money” Account ?
Ah I got it later “Niyo Money” for mutual funds.
Its better to be careful with words like “Account” which can mean differently depending on the context and especially if you are using them in the same screen.
Hi Equitas good to see you here, i thought it was a NiyoX show all the way.
The T&Cs
Nice and clear, best part short!
Wait! before I give you pat on the back, why the hell you need my credit report from CRIF ???
Well I also got a copy of the CRIF report in my Gmail.
PAN Details
Yeah that’s straight forward they want the PAN number.
Modi wants to tax the “7% interest income” you are going to earn.
Well nice touch of humor “We know form filling is taxing”. I like this here, by this time I had navigated quite a few screens and little bit of humor keeps me engaged. Well done again to the one who thought about this.
PAN Details Fetched
I like the fact that they fetched the PAN details.
Best part I didn’t have to enter my NAME , they got it from the PAN number ! Good job.
Well again some points here to the NiyoX team, I have seen some onboarding journeys with 2 screens , one for First name and another for Last Name. Just imagine how many screens they would need to capture VVS Laxman’s full name.
Next Account
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Well the lady with the boxes is back again, one box is closed and one account creation is done. Where is the dog ? Nevermind
Some More T&Cs
Another set of T&Cs, the first question on FATCA seems to be same, rest of the points are different.
Americans are really serious about their Tax collection.
Aadhaar Details
Pretty late, but finally the Star of Indian KYC world Aadhaar makes an entry.
I love the Fun Fact again! but the PAN one was better.
Aadhaar OTP
Got the Aadhaar verification OTP, however this time I had to read the message and type in the 6 digit OTP, no help.
Wait Screen
Again good clear messaging stating why its taking time. Well we all accept the delay in processing by Government.
Aadhaar Details Confirmation
Nice Green tick, with all my Aadhaar details fetched.
Well I should feel little nervous as another company has all my details, ah not to worry I am sure the previous companies where I carelessly gave all the details have lost it to some Hacker in Northern Russia.
Professional Details
Standard stuff here. No Fun fact ?? May be they thought the Salary part is the joke :)
Personal Details
Well they want to know about my Father and Mother, just in case I get into some wrong stuff, but i don’t have to worry they don’t have my Mom’s number :)
Place of Birth, they don’t have my home town “Rourkela” on the list, I had to select Others, pretty weird.
Address Confirmation
They show my Home and office address and want me to choose my communication address. Again no data entry, good job.
Wait! How the hell did you get my office address, its not on my PAN or Aadhaar.
I think the only place they could have got it is from the Credit report, smart work but not cool, you should have told me you are going to pull that trick :(
Add Nominee
A different pop-up, remember the Whatsapp consent pop-up earlier ?
The message on what happens if you chooses later is quite good and in fact deters the user from skipping this important step.
Adding Nominee to your account is important please do that, especially if you are rich and loads of cash in your account.
Nominee Details
Back to familiar Screens. Simple and straight.
Account Opening in Progress
Ah! finally, Nice in progress screen, the ball keeps bouncing in the actual app, well it kept bouncing for more than 5 mins. I was hoping the lady will show up with two closed boxes this time, but nothing happened. Meanwhile I got 3 messages 1 from NiyoX and 2 from Equitas informing me account is created.
After waiting for around 7 mins i killed the app and invoked it again.
Re-enter Phone Number
I had to re-enter my phone number, I was worried if it will be able to continue from where I had left.
Passcode Generation
Yeah! it seems to remember me, Simple steps to create the passcode, however it somehow keeps displaying the OTP which I had received at the start, but small thing, thankfully it remembers me! :)
Touch ID activation
Great to see this feature from Day-1, convenience of a secure login is quite understated.
Whatsapp Consent
Remember the Whatsapp consent screen earlier? that is back again with a rather scary image of doctor trying to do surgery with 2 huge keys.
Not sure why they asked it the 2nd time.
Some Equitas Stuff
While I thought I was done, big brother Equitas just popped up.Hi Equitas, its not that i don’t like you but the NiyoX was cool so far.
But lets get to business, you have some T&Cs for me, great! What is Host 2 Host ? the rest of text is also very cryptic, it reminded me of Tenet, the Nolan movie.
Well I had no choice , I accept all your conditions and whatever Host 2 Host can do or can’t, Just generate the damn OTP.
Well I think, this part seems to be the regulatory part and the page is rendered by Equitas, but can be improved a little more.
Finally!
Well the lady is back, boxes are missing, Never mind the word “Congratulations” reassures its done.
Lego Vault :)
Landing Page
Yeah! I am finally on the landing page.
Couple of pending notification to activate Niyo Money Account and order for Card.
Niyo Money Account : I had to do few more steps to activate that.
I couldn’t order for Cards for few hours as at gave me an error “Servers are down”.
Well that’s it for now from the account opening journey, I will post a separate article on the servicing journeys :) Yes, you got it right, a sequel is coming soon.
Overall thoughts
Really nice consistent journey, they have avoided unnecessary data entry and things are really simple and clear. Awesome job team.
What didn’t go well was the last part where the screen was stuck and I had to restart the app to proceed and the other small thing would be the Equitas T&C’s acceptance screen, they feel really out of place. The messages (SMS) which I got were reassuring but the NiyoX message was asking me to download the app, What? I applied for the account using the app, so some small wording changes based on channel would be helpful. I later observed they have a browser journey as well, so assuming its a common message.
The last screen :) matters hence
