BukuWarung

BukuWarung is a fintech super-app offering digital bookkeeping, payments, stock management, and related tools to micro, small, and medium enterprises in Indonesia. With a customer base of 6.5 million businesses and counting, it is used by merchants across every district in the country and is leading the digitization of Indonesian MSMEs.

The company wanted to optimize the delivery process and reduce costs for one-time passwords. The stakes were direct: when users couldn't sign up or confirm transactions swiftly, revenue was hurt. BukuWarung receives more than 200,000 monthly requests to open new accounts from merchants on different smartphones and mobile devices, spread all over Indonesia, including remote areas with slow internet connectivity.

Every new user could obtain their OTP through WhatsApp or SMS, and the product team wanted to test which channel worked best for deliverability and conversions — users entering their correct one-time passwords. To run that experiment and optimize the process, they needed a suitable vendor.

After evaluating several options, BukuWarung opted for Bird to run the experiment. Bird's solutions let them work with multiple channels and the right reporting tools, while being cost-effective.

The experiment was an A/B test. Half of the users who requested new accounts received their OTPs through SMS, while the other half received them over WhatsApp. Since WhatsApp is a popular communication channel in Indonesia, the initial hypothesis was that it would outperform SMS. Surprisingly, the results showed otherwise: SMS outperformed WhatsApp conversion rates, thanks to Bird's relationships with carriers in the region.

“We picked Bird because their platform helped us experiment faster with different channels. They also have a deeper presence and great relationship with carriers in the region. This was critical to optimize OTP deliverability and conversions.”

Chinmay Agrawal, Product Manager, BukuWarung

Based on the findings, the team concluded that SMS should be the primary channel — but they didn't want to completely disregard WhatsApp. The product team agreed the most optimized verification process would be:

If a user does not provide their correct OTP within 30 seconds of receiving it via SMS, they get the option to request it again via SMS or WhatsApp.

With the help of Bird, BukuWarung increased OTP conversions by roughly 15% to approximately 97%. The company is now able to smoothly verify hundreds of thousands of merchants every month — no small feat, especially given that many of those merchants are scattered across remote regions of Indonesia and use different mobile devices.