6 ms·
We're Chioma, Uche, and Zach, cofounders at Payhippo. We give loans to small businesses in Nigeria in less than 3 hours. Here's our website: https://payhippo.ng
by PayHippo 5y ago
We're Chioma, Uche, and Zach, cofounders at Payhippo. We give loans to small businesses in Nigeria in less than 3 hours. Here's our website: https://payhippo.ng https://payhippo.ng
Most of these businesses are creditworthy, but traditional banks and lenders often don’t lend to them because there are no credit scores and collateral requirements are too high. That’s why we assess businesses, build their Payhippo Scores, and provide financing to them.
Speed is everything for these business owners that are buying goods and need capital. For example, a supermarket may run out of inventory and not have the cash on hand to buy new goods. With PayHippo’s instant financing, that supermarket has the liquidity to buy inventory and make sure to retain the customer in their store. We deliver loans 21x faster than the next faster competitor. We slowed down our disbursement time from 3 hours to 6-9 hours one day. Almost immediately we got emails from two separate borrowers saying that they are disappointed at how long it is taking. This was validation about how important it is for us to be able to serving working capital needs on-demand.
Through our mobile-friendly web app, businesses can apply in just a few minutes. After 10-20 minutes our system has automatically verified and underwritten the business' loan. Once a human double-checks this verification and underwriting, (1-2 hours wait time) a business receives a loan offer. Once they click accept then funds are automatically disbursed to their account.
Please ask us any questions or provide any comments!
- toomuchtodo 5y agoDo you plan to offer your underwriting and portfolio management services to funds or other investment vehicles?
- PayHippo 5y agoThis could be really cool! No concrete plans but did you have any examples of when you've seen this done well?
- toomuchtodo 5y agoThe canonical examples that would come to mind would be https://prosper.com https://prosper.com and https://lendingclub.com https://lendingclub.com (each have sections on their site for institutional investors). I've participated in https://kiva.org https://kiva.org as well, but their microlending model leaves a lot to be desired. By supporting such a model, you could enable more capital to flow to creditworthy borrowers in your market than you'd be able to aggregate as a single org.
- PayHippo 5y agoThanks! I'll take a look
- Geekette 5y agoCongrats on launching. Is your customer base currently in Nigeria or across Africa? Your intro here lists the former while the website states the latter. Also curious as to how you determine sufficient collateral for borrowers and what tools you use to hedge against default: Do you focus on lending to businesses with resellable capital assets (equipment, inventory, etc), setup autopay/direct debit as condition of loan, etc?
- PayHippo 5y agoThanks for the note. You're right there's an inconsistency - we haven't figured out which to say so often flip back and forth. Our customer base is in Nigeria but we know our mission is broader. Per collateral: Our lending is unsecured
- Geekette 5y agoConsider a tagline that incorporates your vision and current mission/status, e.g. "Lending to small African businesses starting with Nigeria" or "Financing small African businesses, one country at a time".
- mmmuhd 5y agoCongratulations Chioma, Uche and Zach, more traction to your launch! In case you have an open position for fullstack web developer from Nigeria, I will be happy to join your team.
- PayHippo 5y agoThanks! Send us a note on linkedin