CiNKO cut activation time by 75% (from 14 days to under 4)

Cinko is an international digital wallet built for freelancers and remittance recipients across Latin America. Users can receive money in any currency, manage crypto, spend with a Visa card in digital dollars, and withdraw to a local bank, all from one app.

Getting people to sign up wasn't a problem. Cinko's funnel was healthy through download and Know Your Customer (KYC) completion. Users uploaded their photos, entered their personal data, verified their identity without a hitch. 

But then nothing happened. They'd complete every onboarding step and never make a transaction.

The metric that mattered most, time to first cash-in, sat at an average of 14 days. For a fintech app where the entire value proposition lives on the other side of that first deposit, two weeks of silence is where users disappear for good.

Cinko's messaging setup at the time was a patchwork. Mailchimp handled some communications, an internal IT tool handled transactional messages, and the marketing team didn't have unified access to either. Segmentation was limited to broad country-level groupings, and there was no behavior-based automation to speak of.

The marketing team knew what they needed to say and roughly when to say it. They just didn't have the infrastructure to act on it.

Cinko implemented OneSignal with support from Bildung, a OneSignal partner, that helped bridge the gap between their marketing and engineering teams. The rollout was iterative: defining a tag taxonomy, designing user journeys, coordinating the technical integration, and launching flows on a weekly cadence.

Three journeys formed the foundation:

KYC / Onboarding:  Users who stalled mid-verification had no idea where they stood. Now they receive automatic, contextual updates at every step: whether they stopped halfway, hit an error, or need to redo something. No more silence after signup.

Activation:  The highest-impact flow. Using a combination of push notifications and email segmented by behavior, Cinko began reaching users who had completed KYC but hadn't made their first deposit. Now messaging is tailored to where they are in the funnel, not just what country they are in.

Post-Transaction Feedback: Once a user transacts, Cinko triggers survey journeys to learn what's working, what's missing, and why people chose the app. For a startup iterating quickly, that signal is as valuable as the transaction itself.

The activation journey had the most measurable impact. In the markets where Cinko focused their efforts, time to first transaction dropped from 14 days to 3–4 days. This is a 75% reduction that directly affects retention and downstream revenue.

Beyond that single metric, the shift from country-based to behavior-based segmentation opened up use cases that weren't possible before. Cinko can now identify and message users who deposit but never use their card, or users transacting in USD who don't realize they can buy local currency through the app. Each of those is a reactivation opportunity that used to go unnoticed.

The team also adopted OneSignal's AI copy generator for push notification copy and email subject lines, using it to test variants across different tones and optimize for open rates.

Cinko's story is a great example of what happens when a lean marketing team gets the right infrastructure underneath them. To be successful, they just clearly defined metrics, behavior-based journeys, and used a platform that let them act on what they already knew about their users.

They're now exploring in-app messaging as the next channel, and continuing to refine segmentation as their user base grows across markets.