Chase Media Solutions

The Challenge

Chase's card offer analytics platform required national brands and media agencies to wait for internal users to onboard them manually before getting access to campaign analytics. The existing flow required 5+ business days from campaign live to campaign access.

Discovery

We interviewed the internal users responsible for onboarding merchants, along with authentication and security tech leads, to define a best-practice flow that satisfied financial-institution security standards and held up under multi-role scrutiny.

Key findings:

• Manual bottleneck — every merchant depended on an internal user completing setup before any access was possible, creating multi-day delays
• Security-first constraints — as a financial institution, identity and access controls couldn't be relaxed for speed; they had to be designed into the flow from the first step
• Multiple roles, different needs — internal admins, client account owners, and brand users each required scoped access, so a one-size onboarding path wouldn't hold

Framing the Strategy

We reframed onboarding around a single goal: get merchants into their offer data — from viewed and activated offers — as fast as possible, without compromising security.

Design principles:

• Immediate, secure access — bring merchants into their accounts right away, with strong authentication built into the entry point rather than bolted on later
• Security as a feature — two-factor authentication from the very first login, presented as a mark of trust rather than a hurdle
• Guided by communication — use clear email touchpoints (invitation, account creation, onboarding success) to move users forward at each step

The Solution

Progressive Application

We designed a streamlined entry path focused on getting verified users into the platform quickly. Rather than gating access behind a long form, the flow front-loads secure authentication and brings merchants to their data as the first meaningful moment.

Security-First Authentication + Email Guidance

Two-factor authentication is established from the first login, making account security a visible, upfront part of the experience. A connected sequence of email touchpoints — invitation to create an account, confirmation, and onboarding success — guides each user through the flow and back into the platform at the right moments.

Results

Reflection

The biggest insight was that onboarding is not a gate — it's a gradient. By letting merchants get access to their accounts immediately, we aligned the business incentive (more merchants exploring analytics tools) with the user need (start learning the platform's benefits). The compliance requirements didn't go away — they just moved into the moment, with tech-supported guardrails.