Leading Digital Bank Eradicates Bonus Abuse Thanks to SEON’s Email Module

About albo

Albo is one of Mexico’s leading digital banks, designed to deliver the best experience to its customers through an innovative app and financial products. Founded in 2016 by Angel Sahagun, the startup strengthened its reputation as one of the country’s most exciting fintechs after raising more than $19M through a historic investment round in 2019 and $45M in a Series B funding round in 2020.

The Challenge

As a digital bank, Albo’s mission was to provide flexible, easy-to-use financial solutions that stand apart from traditional banking. To accelerate user acquisition, Albo launched referral programs and sign-up bonuses. However, the same features that attracted genuine users also drew the attention of fraudsters.

Despite implementing ID verification measures, Albo struggled to curb bonus abusers – fraudsters who created fake accounts solely to exploit these promotions. The result was significant financial losses and a referral program that wasn’t delivering value.

Our referral program was backfiring. It was attracting fraudsters instead of legitimate users, and bonus hunters were costing us too much money

acob Ortega, CTO at Albo

To mitigate the problem, Albo’s team had to rely heavily on manual reviews, spending significant time shutting down fake accounts and tracking the evolving tactics fraudsters used to bypass their defenses. This reactive approach was not scalable, diverting resources from Albo’s growth initiatives and weighing down the business.

The Solution

Although Albo had implemented various tools to analyze user onboarding, one key gap remained: they lacked the ability to assess email addresses for legitimacy, which was a critical indicator of fraud.

A quick search led them to SEON’s solution.

With SEON’s email module, Albo could instantly identify suspicious users based solely on their email addresses, filtering out bad actors checking for data breaches, first-seen dates, if they are disposable and numerous other data points. This provided a much-needed safeguard against bonus abuse while ensuring that legitimate customers could join effortlessly.

The Results

Implementing SEON’s email module delivered immediate and impactful results for Albo:

• Eliminated Bonus Abuse: Albo successfully eradicated the issue of bonus hunters, restoring the effectiveness of their referral programs.
• Saved unnecessary company expense: By reducing bonus abuse and manual review times, they saved 5% of total platform expenditure
• Reduced Long-Term Risk: By blocking fraudulent users during onboarding, Albo drastically reduced their exposure to potential risks.
• Improved Data Accuracy: Without bad data skewing analytics, Albo now makes smarter, data-driven decisions that fuel their growth.

 SEON’s email module became the missing piece of Albo’s fraud prevention strategy, delivering peace of mind and enabling the business to focus on genuine growth.

Its simplicity and ease of integration are truly fantastic. We’re excited to explore additional SEON products like the Phone module to enhance our security even further.

Jacob Ortega