Square Digital Account Opening Study
Can Square carry over its simple CX & intuitive solutions into a standard set of business banking products?
Overview
Square is bringing the strength of its brand and innovative approach to customer experience (CX) beyond payments and merchant services. The announcement of Square Banking on July 20th, 2021 may not have been a surprise to many but certainly signals a progressive evolution in fintech banking options available to small businesses. After announcing its industrial bank in March 2021, Square has now introduced a suite of products focused on making banking simple for small businesses. This suite of products includes two newly minted solutions – checking and savings, combined with their lending solution previously known as Square Capital. To help your institution gauge the competitive nature of Square’s digital checking and savings account opening/onboarding process, Barlow Research has designed the Square Digital Account Opening Study.
Scope
Barlow Research will recruit small business evaluators from companies $100K-<$10MM in annual sales to conduct this research. Where possible, Barlow Research will use our small business account to perform the evaluation. The objectives of this study include:
- Provide an end-to-end workflow of the digital account opening customer journey for a Square checking and savings account, including pre-application steps, application, verification processes, funding and two weeks of onboarding.
- Understand the different workflows between net-new (no previous relationship) and existing Square customers.
- Identify the business structures supported by Square Banking.
- Transactions for merchant services will be limited to interactions required for understanding the interaction/functionalities of the checking and savings accounts.
Barlow Research will conduct this study in two phases to track functionality early in the product rollout (August 2021) and six months into product rollout (February 2022). Eight (8) evaluations will be conducted:
| NEW CUSTOMERS | EXISTING CUSTOMERS | |||
| PHASE 1 AUGUST 2021 |
Sole Proprietor | Multi-owner LLC or Corporation |
Sole Proprietor | Multi-owner LLC or Corporation |
| PHASE 2 FEBRUARY 2022 |
Sole Proprietor | Multi-owner LLC or Corporation |
Sole Proprietor | Multi-owner LLC or Corporation |
Deliverables
- Two summary reports (one after each phase) containing analysis, customer journey maps, pertinent screenshots and appendix of research questions.
- PDF copies of documents/agreements provided during each evaluation.
- Customer experience video(s).
- Web conference presentation of results after each phase.
Results published
To inquire….email to insights@barlowresearch.com.
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