From awareness to activation: How Visa unlocked 155% growth in App Downloads and 85% Lower Cost per Registration with AppsFlyer

Overview

• Visa launched Visa Pay App in the Democratic Republic of Congo with the goal of demonstrating a fully digital acquisition and issuance model in one of Africa’s most complex payments markets.
• Prior to implementing AppsFlyer, Visa had no consistent, event-level view that showed the quality of installs driven by paid marketing, making it impossible to evaluate true campaign effectiveness or allocate budget with confidence.
• By implementing AppsFlyer’s full-funnel attribution, ROI360 cost integration, and SKAN capabilities, Visa and their media agency Assembly transformed their measurement approach, driving a 155% increase in install volume, an 85% reduction in cost per acquisition, and a 114% improvement in registration conversion rate over a 12-week campaign.

Background

Visa is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories.

As part of Visa’s digital expansion strategy in Africa, Visa Pay was selected as the vehicle to launch a world-class digital payment experience in the DRC, enabling customers to onboard digitally, receive virtual Visa credentials instantly, and transact online without the friction traditionally associated with accessing financial products in the region.

Challenge

The DRC presented a unique set of market conditions. The payments ecosystem is highly fragmented and cash-heavy, with limited interoperability, low card penetration, and significant friction in accessing digital financial products. This placed an increased challenge on onboarding, education, and trust-building from the outset.

Visa’s commercial objectives were clear: prove and then scale a fully digital acquisition and issuance model, driving customer acquisition, activation, and repeat usage through a mobile-first experience. But achieving this required more than strong creative and media investment; it required measurement that could hold up in a complex, multi-channel environment.

Before AppsFlyer, Visa could see post-install events for the app, but visibility into the quality of paid installs was limited. There was no consistent, event-level view of where users acquired through paid campaigns were dropping off or which campaigns were genuinely driving business outcomes.

Compounding this, each media platform reported on its own terms, producing fragmented and sometimes conflicting performance stories. As their marketing mix evolved, comparing channels fairly, attributing credit across touchpoints, and making confident budget allocation decisions became increasingly important. Without a unified source of truth, Visa and Assembly were optimizing to surface-level metrics, primarily installs, rather than the outcomes that truly mattered: completed onboardings and active wallets.

Solution

To move from awareness without attribution to conversion-led growth, Visa and Assembly implemented AppsFlyer’s full-funnel measurement framework, establishing a single, independent source of truth across all channels and platforms.

Full-funnel event measurement

AppsFlyer’s SDK was integrated into the Visa Pay app, with custom in-app event monitoring set up to capture every meaningful step in the user journey: install, OTP verification, account creation, registration completion, and wallet creation. Visa now had a clear, consistent view of where users converted and where they dropped off against every channel and campaign.

Cross-platform attribution and ROI360

AppsFlyer’s ROI360 cost integration unified ad spends and performance data from media platforms into a single dashboard, eliminating the discrepancies that had previously made cross-channel comparison unreliable. Custom dashboards at campaign, ad set, and ad group level gave Assembly the granularity needed to optimize in near real time, with reporting cadence moving from bi-weekly to twice a week.

SKAN attribution for iOS

Aligned with today’s privacy-first ecosystem, AppsFlyer’s SKAN attribution capabilities gave Visa reliable iOS measurement without dependence on platform-reported installs alone. This visibility enabled Visa to confidently scale iOS investment, with budgets increasing 184% between Week 1 and Week 7, knowing that quality, not just volume, was being measured.

Results

Implementing AppsFlyer’s full-funnel measurement framework fundamentally changed how Visa and Assembly defined and measured success, shifting the focus from installs to meaningful business outcomes. Comparing Week 1 to Week 12 post-optimization:

• Install volume up 155%
• Cost per install down 69%
• Cost per acquisition down 85%
• Acquisition rate (registrations / installs) up 114%

On iOS specifically, SKAN-driven visibility enabled confident budget scaling, with investment growing 184% between Week 1 and Week 7. Over the same period, cost per acquisition on iOS fell 30% and acquisition rate improved 86%.

Budget was reallocated toward higher-quality audiences identified through AppsFlyer insights, cost per acquisition improved 79% and acquisition rate increased 169%, between Week 1 and Week 7.

Beyond the campaign metrics, the impact extended to how Visa operates. Full-funnel KPIs are now standard practice across the team, and the framework established in DRC is positioned to serve as a blueprint as Visa continues its expansion across Africa. With AppsFlyer’s ROI360, reporting shifted to real-time, enabling optimization decisions to be made twice a week rather than bi-weekly.

AppsFlyer enabled us to shift from install-centric reporting to a true full-funnel acquisition model, giving us unified visibility into every stage from install to wallet creation. With a single source of truth, we optimized budget toward high-value audiences and scaled efficiently — driving a 155% increase in installs, improving acquisition rates by 114%, and reducing CPA by 85%. This framework not only improved immediate campaign performance but also established a scalable blueprint for data-driven growth and digital wallet adoption in emerging markets.

Shubham Gaur, Performance Director, Assembly

AppsFlyer helped us integrate our media platforms and shift from awareness without attribution to conversion-led growth. By optimizing to in-app events like installs and registration, we improved targeting, measurement, and acquisition efficiency across channels.

Tarek Abdalla, Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, CEMEA @Visa