Customers trust that when they log into their banking apps, the experience is fast, secure and reliable. For that reason, Discover has made strategic investments in recent years to further strengthen the mobile and web login experiences.
In the summer of 2024 a new, modernized backend for web and mobile login reduced millions of customer errors annually. And last month, the second phase of the project, a new universal login component (ULC), launched.
The primary outcomes expected from the ULC include:
- Ensuring a consistent and accessible experience across all Discover products
- Simplifying technical architecture and reducing maintenance overhead
- Elevating customer experience by reducing login errors
- Strengthening observability and monitoring
- Improving security with expanded step-up authentication
To date, the benefits have been significant, including:
- A 1.1% increase over the legacy login success rate on Discover.com
- Millions of dollars in fraud savings
- Significant reduction in the technical error rate for logging in
- Increased customer satisfaction with login as measured by the 2025 JD Power Credit Card Mobile App & Website Study
About the Universal Login Component (ULC) Initiative
The new ULC was designed to unify login experiences across Discover’s web and mobile platforms by replacing fragmented legacy systems with a centralized, reusable component. The component introduced key enhancements including removal of the product selection drop-down menu, adding the show/hide functionality and standardizing error messaging.
Acting as a modular web component integrated into both web pages and other applications, the ULC supports multiple variants such as popups for overlays and embedded login widgets.
Testing & Rollout
To ensure the ULC performed reliably and with the highest quality standards built in, an extensive suite of automated test cases and manual testing was conducted covering error rates (invalid credentials and lockouts), accessibility, and UI consistency across browsers.
Once all the testing was completed successfully, a staged rollout was initiated starting with 5% of all traffic before gradually increasing to 100%. The migration was done across 80+ public pages and multiple web design templates.
Key Learnings & Challenges
Throughout this multi-year project, cross-functional teams across Digital, Business Technology and Fraud overcame roadblocks by working together as one team. Some of the key learnings include:
- error rationalization improved user feedback
- disaster recovery planning ensured resilience
- profiling gaps identified and solved long-standing issues
Examples of Universal Login Component Implementation on Discover website
The following image shows the change that we made with this ULC implementation:
