H&R Block Transforms Identity to Power Mobile Banking at Scale

Objective

H&R Block aimed to launch its new mobile banking platform, Spruce, with a modernized CIAM architecture. The goal was to provide a secure, scalable, and passwordless user experience capable of handling high-volume traffic and rapid growth during the intensive tax season.

Challenge

The existing legacy monolithic system lacked the agility and performance required for a modern digital banking experience. It could not reliably support 140 authentications per second, creating a bottleneck that threatened the successful rollout of the Spruce platform and its ability to scale to meet customer demand.

Solution

H&R Block implemented a full-scale identity transformation using PingOne and PingFederate. By moving to this managed solution, they enabled seamless OIDC and SAML protocols, allowing for a modernized, passwordless authentication journey that integrated effortlessly with the new Spruce mobile banking application.

Results

The modernization was completed in just 90 days. Within the first week of launch, the Spruce platform successfully generated approximately $60 million in deposits. The new architecture proved its scalability by managing peak authentication loads while providing a friction-free experience for a rapidly growing customer base.