When it comes to paying for a large purchase (let's say US$500) in LATAM, we have 2 options: paying upfront with cash or debit, or finance it using a credit card. The problem is that 80% of people here don't have a credit card, getting one is hard and even those like me that have one, credit cards are frustrating, expensive and complex to understand. They can make you overspend, the terms and fees are opaque and keeping track of your purchases and payments it's confusing.
This problem is pushing a lot of people to go to department stores with their own installment credit, but with incredibly expensive interest rates (+70% APR) or delaying important purchases for months or sometimes years! And merchants (like retailers or ecommerce) are losing potential sales and customers because they can't offer financing themselves or other payment alternatives.
We stumbled into this problem while in college because we ourselves had a lot of problems with our banks and we are so passionate about financial services that when we had so many negative experiences with our own credit cards, we were inspired to build a more fair, fast and transparent solution for the people in LATAM. We saw that in many developed countries these solutions were gaining popularity and technology was available, so it didn't make sense for us that there wasn't something like that available.
Our payment method lets merchants offer their customers up to 18 monthly installments to pay for purchases of up to US$5k. When they're in-store, consumers scan a QR code, apply in minutes with their phones, receive an instant offer and can enjoy their purchase! We then settle with the merchant upfront and collect the installments from consumers directly. For ecommerce, it works like any other payment method and we developed integrations with the major ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and custom platforms. We make money by charging a discount fee to the merchant for each purchase and interest to the consumer (average ~40% APR, significantly lower than most credit cards in Mexico (~60% APR) and now launching 0% APR programs). Right now we're live with global brands like Specialized Bicycles and Echelon Fitness and ~110 merchants in Mexico.
It's been a crazy so far, we are first time founders and started the company while in college (Juan dropt out), learned from scratch how to underwrite credit, fraud, credit scoring and manage risk, built a complete platform (from the loan application, to the servicing software and all infrastructure), raise debt, sales, product design and a lot of other things!