Metro Bank Onboarding
Banking differently means a usable card in your hand before the plastic is even printed.
Metro Bank’s promise is that it does banking differently, and onboarding is where a new customer first finds out whether that’s true or just marketing. The old path made people wait. Prove who you are, then wait for a card in the post before the account feels real at all. We rebuilt the onboarding and identity journey so the proof adapts to the person, and the account is usable the moment they finish.
Identity verification
Verification is the point where onboarding usually turns hostile, because it asks for documents in an order that assumes everyone carries the same ones. So the flow sets the issuing country first, then asks what the person actually holds: a UK, EEA or Swiss passport, a UK driving licence, an EU or Swiss national ID, a biometric residence permit. Each choice routes to the checks that document supports, and nothing else. That takes out the unnecessary in-person friction clinging to the old process, which was a recurring complaint in the commercial research running alongside this.
People come first, on the app or in a branch. Onboarding is the first chance to prove that, or to quietly disprove it.
The virtual card
The redesign’s spine is one inversion: you get a card at the end of onboarding rather than in the post. A virtual card is created and dropped straight into Apple Wallet, usable anywhere Mastercard is, before the session ends. The physical card becomes a preference. Have it posted in a few working days, or collect and print it at a store the same day.
The redesign closed the gap between finishing onboarding and using the bank, the stretch where new customers go cold without ever telling you.
Someone who joins on the train home can pay for their coffee with the account before they get off it.