Pan-European Crypto UX Research: Unlocking Onboarding Insights Across Six Markets

One of the world's major crypto exchanges asked us a question with a costly answer: why do European users drop out of onboarding in some countries and not in others? We ran 60 in-depth interviews with active users of rival exchanges across six markets in three weeks. The answer was trust, and each market built it differently.

Onboarding is the front door of a crypto business. In the UK, 73% of crypto users buy through a centralised exchange, according to the FCA's 2025 consumer research. In the EU, the MiCA transitional period ended on 1 July 2026, and ESMA told unauthorised providers to stop onboarding new EU clients immediately. Every sign-up now passes through a regulated gate, and every gate is a moment where people can walk away.

The study at a glance

What was the exchange trying to solve?

The exchange's onboarding worked well in some European markets and poorly in others, and the teams inside could not agree why. Completion rates varied widely between countries. Some people blamed the product, some blamed culture, and others suspected something nobody had named yet.

The exchange had ambitious plans for Europe and needed answers fast. The brief was to understand how people experience onboarding on competitor platforms in six key markets: what frustrates them, what builds trust, and what makes them give up halfway through identity verification (KYC, the "know your customer" checks every regulated exchange must run).

The team also wanted something it could use straight away. A 200-page report gathering dust on a shared drive was the outcome to avoid.

Why could the numbers not explain the drop-off?

Dashboards could show where people left. They could not show why. Analytics told the product team which screen lost users in which country, but only a conversation could reveal what that person was thinking at that moment. That is why this was a job for in-depth interviews rather than another survey or funnel report.

How do you research crypto onboarding in six countries at once?

You run all six markets in parallel, with local moderators and one team holding the study together. Working one country after another would have taken months, and crypto moves too fast for that. We completed 60 interviews across Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom within three weeks.

Local moderators, one central team

Each market had native-speaking moderators who understood the language and the local relationship with money, technology and trust. A German participant's worries about data security are not the same as a Spanish participant's expectations of customer support, and those differences shape what a sign-up flow must say, and when. A central team kept the discussion guide, timing and analysis consistent, so the six markets could be compared like for like.

Who we talked to

We did not look for crypto enthusiasts happy to talk about blockchain for hours. We recruited active users of competitor platforms who had recently been through onboarding elsewhere, so they could compare experiences while the memory was fresh. Screening checked their usage against specific criteria, confirmed accounts on particular exchanges and made sure each person was willing to talk openly about what went wrong. How we recruit and screen participants is the same in every market we work in.

What happened in each interview

Every qualitative UX research session lasted 60–90 minutes and followed a semi-structured guide: consistent enough to compare markets, open enough to let participants surprise us. They did. Each session combined three parts:

• Retrospective walkthrough. Participants took us through their own onboarding, screen by screen: where they felt confident, where they hesitated, and what nearly made them stop.

• Comparative exploration. We showed anonymised elements from several exchange interfaces and asked which felt trustworthy, which felt confusing and which felt suspicious.

• Future visioning. If they could change anything about signing up, what would it be?

Watching the interviews live

The client team did not wait for a report. They watched sessions in real time through live video links with simultaneous interpretation, heard users in their own words and started forming hypotheses before fieldwork had finished. One product manager told us:

I learned more in three days of watching interviews than I had in six months of looking at dashboards.

What did European crypto users tell us?

European users would put up with friction they understood. Across 60 interviews, five findings changed how the team saw its own onboarding, and several overturned assumptions it had held dear.

Security only reassures when people can see it

Participants did not simply want security. They wanted to see it working. Progress indicators during document checks, a clear reason for each piece of information requested, and confirmation messages that acknowledged how sensitive that information was all built confidence. When those small signals were missing, people grew anxious, even though the security underneath was robust.

Thorough identity checks can reassure rather than repel

This one surprised everyone. Participants in markets with stricter financial regulation, such as Germany and the Netherlands, expected a thorough verification process. When onboarding felt too quick or too easy, it raised suspicion instead of delight. As one German participant put it: "If they're not checking my identity properly, how do I know they're checking everyone else's?"

Translation is not localisation

Several platforms had translations that were technically accurate and still felt wrong to native speakers. Financial terms, error messages and help content all needed adapting for each market. In our Italian interviews, participants responded better to a warmer, more conversational tone in help text; Dutch participants preferred direct, no-nonsense wording.

Device habits change from one market to the next

UK participants overwhelmingly preferred to complete onboarding on their phones. German and French participants were more likely to start on a desktop, particularly when they had to upload documents. Platforms designed only for mobile were losing sign-ups in those key markets.

Explain why before you ask

In every market, participants were willing to share personal information when they understood why it was needed. Unexplained requests, especially for details that seemed unrelated to a financial service, caused immediate friction and drop-off.

From finding to design decision

What changed after the research?

The exchange used the findings to rethink its European onboarding flow. The changes included redesigned progress indicators, copy adapted to each market and a new way of explaining verification requirements, giving the reason before asking for sensitive information.

The research also shaped wider decisions about which markets to prioritise and how much to invest in localisation. Understanding how people in different European markets think about crypto gave product and marketing teams a shared foundation for those choices.

Perhaps the most lasting result is the simplest. Sixty hours of interview footage became a reference library that product managers, designers and marketers could return to whenever a decision needed real user voices rather than assumptions.

What should a crypto platform research before changing its onboarding?

Start from the decision you need to make, then choose the study that answers it. Four situations come up again and again:

• You can see where users drop out, but not why. Run in-depth interviews with people who recently abandoned or completed sign-up, and walk back through the step that lost them.

• You are entering a new market. Talk to users of local competitors before you localise, as this exchange did. Our work on market entry decisions shows how that evidence feeds a go or no-go choice. It is one of the ten decisions our customer-led strategy work is built around.

• You have redesigned the flow and want to test it before launch. Run moderated usability sessions on the prototype in each target market.

• You need to know how trust develops after sign-up. Follow new users through their first weeks with an online diary study, so you see the moments that make them stay or leave.

Why does onboarding research matter more in 2026?

In Europe, onboarding is now where regulation and trust meet. Since the end of the MiCA transitional period on 1 July 2026, ESMA has expected providers without authorisation to stop taking on new EU clients. Identity checks are here to stay. What remains open is whether users experience them as protection or as an obstacle, and only users can answer that.

The FCA's 2025 research adds a signal from the UK: 25% of crypto users say they would be more likely to invest if crypto were more regulated. For many people, visible checks are part of the reason to trust a platform, which is what our German and Dutch participants told us.

Why work with MindMarket on multi-country crypto research?

Because one partner can run all your markets at the same time, and you only have one conversation to manage. For this exchange, we handled recruitment, screening, moderation, interpretation, analysis and reporting across six countries through a single point of contact. No juggling six agencies, and no stitching together findings from studies that were never designed to be compared.

We work with local moderators in 60+ countries and have delivered 400+ projects. See how our multi-country research network works, or read more about our crypto market research.

Frequently asked questions

Ready to hear what your users are thinking?

Whether you are launching in a new market, fixing a sign-up flow that underperforms or trying to understand why conversion differs between countries, the answer is usually in a conversation you have not had yet. Tell us the decision you are facing and the people you need to hear from, and you will have a costed proposal within 48 hours.