Intuit powers payroll for over one million small businesses and has become the leader in online payroll solutions. Intuit empowers companies to run payroll in just minutes, with an easy online interface and at a low cost.
As a payroll provider, Intuit stores sensitive information for over 1 million small businesses. Looking to stay ahead of online fraud, Intuit wanted to implement an additional layer of security to protect their customers' sensitive data. "As Intuit, we need to be on the forefront of online security technology," said Ariege Misherghi, Product Manager at Intuit Online Payroll.
To address this need, Intuit turned to Twilio's phone call and text messaging APIs to provide another layer of protection. When an online user attempts to change sensitive data, Intuit sends a verification code to the user's phone, via phone call or SMS, to provide out-of-band identity verification. By proving that the online user is in possession of their phone, Intuit thwarts would-be identity thieves with minimal inconvenience to legitimate customers.
For Intuit, Twilio proved to be the fastest way to move their new security feature to the cloud. "With Twilio, we got all the support we needed, and in a timely and efficient manner," said Misherghi. "Using Twilio, we built both phone call and text-messaging features with just one API and one vendor, which saves time and money." Intuit also identified Twilio as the most cost-efficient option, moving from idea to production with no up-front capital expenses.
Knowing that onerous security features can be a stumbling block for users, the experience for Intuit's customers was paramount. Intuit built the initial proof-of-concept in one afternoon with Twilio's APIs. They then rapidly moved to usability testing and deployment to an initial set of pilot users. "Given the urgency around changing payroll information for employees before a payroll run, it was very important to find a low-impact solution. We got great feedback from initial customers," explains Misherghi. With that feedback, Intuit made the decision to deploy the solution to their entire Intuit Online Payroll user-base.
Using Twilio for identity protection represented the first deployment of Twilio within Intuit, but the project ignited the imagination of product managers across the company. "We're already thinking about how we can use Twilio to improve the customer experience in other areas of Intuit Online Payroll, and across Intuit," said Misherghi.
"We're very confident about the solution we've developed to protect sensitive information and prevent fraud, and we couldn't have done that successfully without Twilio on the backend."
- Ariege Misherghi
Product Manager at Intuit Online Payroll