How to Fix KYC Verification Issues with Online Forms?

KYC (Know Your Customer) checks are important for any serious business. This is especially true if you handle money, legal matters, or sensitive data like many financial institutions do. But let’s be honest. KYC is often a headache for both you and your customers.

Slow verifications, poor user experience, and high drop-off rates are all too common. If you’re tired of losing leads and wasting support time, you’re not alone. These KYC checks aim to detect financial crime, but when people perform them poorly, they frustrate legitimate users too.

Here are 8 common KYC verification issues and practical ways to overcome them:

Relying on Manual Checks

Manually reviewing documents like IDs or utility bills is a time sink. If you're doing this in-house, your team gets overwhelmed fast, especially during high traffic periods.

It’s easy to miss things, overlook fraud, or delay approvals by hours or days. Meanwhile, your users are left waiting and wondering.

Solution: Use a trusted KYC automation platform like Sumsub, Onfido, or Persona. These tools check identity with documents, selfies, and proof of address in real time. This cuts review time from hours to seconds. You reduce errors, save time, and scale with ease.

Asking for Too Much Information

Long KYC forms feel like an interrogation. Asking for unnecessary details like multiple documents, phone verification, and personal history only drives people away. Every extra field is a potential drop-off point.

Solution: Only collect what’s legally required under KYC requirements and your customer identification program (CIP). Break longer forms into steps and use conditional logic to show questions based on previous answers.

With Formester, you can hide fields until you need them, making the process feel faster and more personal.

Poor Mobile Experience

Over 70 percent of users sign up from their phone. If your KYC form looks bad, loads slowly, or isn’t optimized for mobile, people will give up. Small text, hard to click buttons, and broken file uploads are deal breakers.

Solution: Always test your forms on various devices before going live. Use a mobile first form builder that adjusts automatically to screen sizes.

No Clear Instructions or Guidance

KYC is confusing to many users. They don’t know what qualifies as a valid ID, how to take a proper selfie, or what proof of address really means. That leads to failed submissions, repeat attempts, and angry support tickets.

Solution: Give short, clear instructions next to each field. Add tooltips, example images, and dos and don’ts wherever needed. Consider adding a short checklist at the beginning to prepare the user before they start uploading documents like their KYC document.

No Option to Save Progress or Resume Later

Life happens. Your user might lose connection, experience interruptions, or close the browser mid-process. If they have to start over from scratch, most won’t try again.

Solution: Enable partial submissions and autosave features. So that, users can return to their form later.

They can use a link or session ID to continue where they left off. This makes the process easy and frustration-free. This small feature can greatly increase completion rates, especially in longer KYC procedures.

Not Supporting Local Documents

If your platform only accepts certain types of IDs like US passports or driver’s licenses, you’ll instantly block users from other countries. This limits your growth and leaves users frustrated.

Solution: Choose a KYC solution that supports global verification and local document types. Some tools even auto detect document types based on user location and adjust requirements accordingly.

You make things easier and more inclusive for your global customer information collection and customer due diligence (CDD) efforts.

No Follow Up After Failed Verifications

Not every failed KYC attempt is due to fraud. Sometimes users upload blurry photos, skip a field, or simply misunderstand a step. If you don’t follow up, they’ll never know what went wrong and they’ll never come back.

Solution: Set up automated email reminders for users who fail KYC. Include tips to fix their mistakes and a direct link to try again. Keep the tone friendly, supportive, and clear. This also helps in flagging potential suspicious activity without punishing honest users.

Not Tracking or Improving the KYC Process

If you keep getting the same user complaints or seeing high drop-off rates, something in your KYC flow is broken. But most businesses never review their process or gather user feedback.

Solution: Review your KYC funnel every month. Use analytics to track where users drop off. Collect feedback from real users about what confused them. Then improve your form, simplify your steps, and test new tools.

Optimization is never a one time task. Use insights from your risk assessment and ongoing monitoring strategies to stay compliant and efficient.

Final Thoughts

KYC shouldn’t feel like a wall. It should feel like a welcome mat. When done right, it helps you build trust, fight fraud, and onboard good customers fast.

Use tools like Formester to make better KYC flows. It offers conditional logic, mobile-first design, partial saves, and links to your favorite verification platforms. Formester makes KYC verification easy. Whether you are checking beneficial owners or starting a new business, we help you from start to finish.

Turn your KYC from a conversion killer into a seamless experience starting today.