April 16, 2025
Making the returning user flow smoother in Europe: How we boosted conversions by up to 11%
Updated on April 22, 2025
Chris Corbett
Product Lead, Europe
At Plaid, we’re always looking for ways to make finance feel a little less complicated and a lot more connected. That’s why our latest European updates focus on one of the most important parts of the user journey: coming back.
A smooth returning user experience is key to building trust, reducing friction, and driving higher conversion. Our three new features, live in 18 European markets, are helping our customers achieve up to 11% absolute higher conversion.
1. View recently used institutions
We’ve made it easier for users to find the banks they’re most likely to reconnect with. Now, returning users will see their three most recently connected institutions displayed at the top of their bank list. This is particularly impactful for banks with multiple branches. For example, Volksbank Raiffeisenbank in Germany has over 600 branches.
This simple but powerful change means less scrolling, less guessing, and less time spent reconnecting. For users who bank with multiple institutions or revisit your application regularly, this improvement removes friction and encourages faster engagement.
2. Pre-filled user information in Germany and Italy
Returning users in Germany and Italy can now benefit from automatic pre-filling of key information, like their IBANs. For many banks in these markets, it is common for banks to require this information before you can redirect users to the bank. This update significantly reduces the cognitive load on users and speeds up transaction completion.
It also removes unnecessary steps, which is especially impactful in markets where manual data entry is a major barrier to conversion. By streamlining the flow, we’ve made returning to an app or service feel not just faster, but smarter.
3. Smoother authentication in Spain and Italy
In Spain and Italy, we’ve taken a close look at Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and how it impacts the returning user journey. While SCA is vital for security, redundant unnecessary authentication steps can disrupt the flow.
By consolidating duplicative SCA prompts for returning users we’ve seen an absolute uplift of 5 percentage points in conversion in these markets without compromising security.
This is a great example of how we balance compliance with convenience: keeping financial journeys secure, but never slower than they need to be.
Simple, streamlined and fast every time
These improvements reflect our broader mission to make financial services more accessible, more intuitive and more efficient.
With Plaid, businesses can now deliver returning user flows that feel as smooth as the first – only faster. And with our platform live in 20 countries globally (including 18 in Europe) and connections to 12,000 financial institutions, these benefits scale across borders.