2FA SMS achieves 99.5% successful and secure user registrations for Buy@Home

The results using SMSGlobal’s SMS OTP solution:

• 99.5% of users have registered successfully
• Zero downtime for new users registering
• More user-friendly and easier to send than other providers

Buy@Home is a food delivery platform powering online deliveries across three countries. Launched back in 2016, Buy@Home now has more than 500 staff and delivery drivers across 11 cities, including Malaysia’s Kuching, New Zealand’s Auckland, and throughout Australia. Talk about a widespread reach!

Servicing the ever-growing food delivery industry, Buy@Home provides fast and convenient culinary delights to its hungry customers. Buy@Home offers “long distance delivery service to your door with terrific Asian Cuisines” from a range of restaurants and groceries merchants via their mobile app.

What was the challenge?

As a digitally native company, Buy@Home values its customers’ data protection more than anything (and providing delicious food comes at a very close second). Unfortunately, catering to thousands of customers online comes with a risk of security breaches.

Buy@Home knew they needed an easy yet robust solution that would guarantee their users’ account security. After all, mobile apps like theirs store a multitude of private customer data such as credit card details and home addresses.

To tackle these potential threats, their programmers needed to find a one-time passcode solution for users to register their accounts and change their passwords with an added layer of verification. Buy@Home’s IT Director, Dawei Li, said they wanted to find a system that was “stable and reliable for delivery rates and worked for all the countries we operate in at an acceptable price.”

The 2FA SMS Solution

Initially, Dawei and his team went with a competitor SMS provider. However, after using it for some time, they realised it wasn’t as user-friendly or easy to send bulk SMS as they had hoped.

In 2020, they began looking for an alternative platform. After searching around Google, Dawei came across SMSGlobal.

“SMSGlobal sounds like a global solution. I tried it for sending some marketing SMS, and it worked very well and was easy to use.”

First, Dawei trialled and tested out the SMSGlobal platform. Then, he worked closely with our SMS Experts to switch over from their previous provider and navigate our API documentation.

The implementation of 2FA SMS

To add SMS OTP functionality to their application, Buy@Home chose to integrate with our powerful HTTP API.

Dawei says implementing the SMS API was relatively easy by following the documentation and referring to coding snippets and examples. From there, Buy@Home were able to harness the power of Two Factor Authentication SMS.

Buy@Home set up one-time passwords via the HTTP API to be automatically triggered and delivered to customers’ mobiles. So, they could set and forget the account verification process, knowing it was working effectively in the background.

SMS account verification; the results

The SMS OTP functionality worked as seamlessly and effectively as the Buy@Home team could have imagined. They started sending out SMS one time passwords quickly after signing up and say it “works very well.”

“99.5% of the users have registered successfully,” and “the delivery rates are good,” says Dawei.

There is no downtime for their new users to register, ensuring there is as little friction as possible for all new customers starting on the app.

“When we do marketing, it costs us around five dollars per user. If we have managed to get a new user to download [the app], but the user could not register because of not receiving their SMS verification code, it [would be] a waste of the marketing money.”

According to Dawei, a smooth sign-up process also ensures accurate “measurements analysis [on] what is working and what is not” in their marketing and acquisition strategy.

How do SMSGlobal’s services compare to competitors?

Overall, the entire Buy@Home team is pleased with the results of two-factor authentication and the SMSGlobal service. It was simple for their developers to integrate, with both their marketing manager and local manager finding SMSGlobal’s SMS Gateway seamless to use.

“It is easier to use, and the interface is friendly. In SMSGlobal, I can use the system to do bulk SMS and upload an excel file or [send via] API. The best feature is I can see the preview before it is actually sent whereas [our old provider] is based on code control only, with no preview.”

Any future plans for SMS?

Now that SMS OTPS are well and truly cemented into Buy@Home’s business operations, they want to add text messages to their marketing strategy.

SMS marketing will help to engage users and encourage more purchases through the mobile app. With SMSGlobal’s API already integrated with their tech stack, Buy@Home will be able to effortlessly send marketing messages for one-off campaigns or automate marketing texts at regular intervals.

It’s incredible to see Buy@Home’s results just from using SMS for verification and 2FA. Watch this space to see what they’ll achieve next with SMS marketing!