Vanilla eKYC: 90-second retail onboarding

#ekyc #speed #completion

Originally published at finovo.tech/blog/vanilla-ekyc-90-second-onboarding — the canonical version has the latest updates.

Every retail-broker pitch deck shows a "fastest KYC in India" stat. Most are 4-minute flows that the team rounded down. Real medians, taken across 1M+ customers, sit between 110 and 180 seconds.

90 seconds is achievable, but only if you make a small number of unintuitive choices early.

What the regulator actually requires

For a normal individual with an Aadhaar + PAN, SEBI requires:

Identity (Aadhaar or other OVD)
Address (Aadhaar or other OVD)
PAN
A risk-categorisation question set (politically-exposed, source of funds, occupation)
Either video PD or in-person verification

Note: video PD is not always required for all customers. Aadhaar OTP + PAN + risk-cat is sufficient for many low-risk individual customers. The default-on video-PD is a self-imposed compliance choice by many brokers, not a SEBI rule. We turn it on or off per risk-category.

Where the seconds go

Profiled across many brokers, the long-tail in a typical "4-minute" flow:

Step	Median time	What's actually happening
App / page load	8s	First-paint + KYC form bundle
OTP entry	22s	Wait for SMS, switch to SMS app, copy OTP, paste back
PAN photo	31s	Find PAN, take photo, retry once
Video PD setup	28s	Permission grant for camera, lighting, "say your name" prompt
Video PD recording	45s	Live operator queue + 30s recording
Form fields	24s	Address, occupation, FATCA, source-of-funds
Final review + submit	14s	Long Ts and Cs, signature
Total	172s

The 90-second flow doesn't skip anything; it removes wait + switching costs.

How we get to 90 seconds

The five biggest wins:

Aadhaar OTP, no SMS round-trip: capture OTP in the same screen via <input> autocomplete attribute (autocomplete="one-time-code"). On iOS this auto-pastes from SMS; on Android we use the SMS Retriever API. Saves ~12 seconds.
PAN photo with on-device OCR: don't ship the photo to a server for OCR. Run a small model in-browser (or in-app) that auto-captures the PAN when sharpness + glare are acceptable. The customer doesn't tap a shutter button; the page just notices the PAN is in frame and captures. Saves ~18 seconds.
No video PD by default for low-risk: as above, this isn't required for many customers. Skip it unless the risk-cat triggers it. Saves ~73 seconds for ~70% of customers.
Pre-filled form fields from PAN + Aadhaar: address from Aadhaar, name from PAN, DOB from PAN. Customer reviews + confirms instead of typing. Saves ~16 seconds.
One-screen review-and-submit: the legal copy is shown in a collapsed scroll-area (not a separate Ts and Cs page). Saves ~6 seconds + reduces drop-off.

Pass rate, not just speed

Speed is meaningless if customers drop off. The vanilla flow (eKYC vanilla) tracks at 94% pass rate measured across 200K+ recent flows. Failures are mostly:

3.2% PAN-mismatch (typo on form vs OCR)
1.4% Aadhaar OTP timeout
0.9% video PD anomaly (when triggered)
0.4% network error mid-flow
0.1% other

The PAN-mismatch failures usually convert on retry; total customer-side recovery is ~97%.

Where vanilla isn't enough

Vanilla works for individuals. If you need:

Custom branded flow on your domain
Per-state regulatory variations (a few SEBI master circulars require state-specific clauses)
Integration with your in-house RM workflow

…you want eKYC enterprise, which is the same engine wrapped in white-label + per-broker config.

Try it

The 90-second number is verifiable — book a demo and we'll walk you through one customer's full flow with the timestamps visible. No staged demo accounts; we use the actual production logs.