I feel grateful and fortunate that PayJoy is positioned to hire now in summer 2022 despite global turbulence and a downturn in tech valuations. We reached profitability a couple of years ago (a.k.a. “infinite runway” — we’re not in danger of shutting down) and have been multiplying in size annually, on track to reach a billion dollars of gross volume this year, with hundreds of millions of net revenue from millions of happy customers.
Group outing, Golden Gate Park, March 2022
We’re also clarifying how we want to work together in a post-covid world, balancing in-office and remote videoconference. Team leads are empowered to choose whatever works best to achieve their goals, toward PayJoy achieving our mission of bringing finance to the next billion deserving customers in emerging markets. In practice, this looks like a lot of remote work, plus regular “meet ups” at a central location, by team. I meet with much of my direct team who live near SF in-office once a week on Mondays; others fly in once or twice in a quarter. I know a team that meets up socially on the second Tuesday of the month, as well as some that are primarily in office or on the road visiting our stores due to the nature of their work. We had a global leadership meet-up for 50 people in March in San Francisco, and we’re looking at a meet up of about 500 (a third of the company) toward the end of the year, facilitated by rapid covid tests.
So if you’re looking for a successful, growing, mission-driven company with flexible work policies, please head over to our careers page and get in touch!
This demonstrates once again that PayJoy focuses not only on responsible lending and social responsibility, but also on our impact on the climate. As a result, we have teamed-up with ClimatePartner to offset our carbon footprint by supporting a project in a country PayJoy operates in.
For this year, our employee-formed Climate Committee elected the forest protection project in Mataven, Colombia, which protects over 1.1 Million hectares of tropical forest, safeguarding its biodiversity, providing education, healthcare, sanitation, food security, nutrition, and further social benefits for over 16,000 indigenous people.
Furthermore, this project aligns deeper with our intrinsic values because it not only improves the living conditions of the indigenous people, including the existing communication tools, but it also promotes a sustainable economical growth.
Moving on, every year our PayJoy Climate Committee will vote towards picking a project in a country where we operate in. We will also drive other sustainability projects here at PayJoy so, please stay tuned for more!
Please see below more details on how we protect more than 1000 hectares of tropical forest.
Learn more about the project.
As the biggest project of its nature (REDD+) in Colombia, it follows a holistic approach to make a lasting change in the behavior towards sustainable practices, forest protection, and conservation.
Some of this project’s main goals are:
reduce the vulnerability of indigenous territory
strengthen governance through the local communities
improve the system of communication and transportation.
help improve food self-sufficiency for six different ethnic groups
Forests are some of the planet’s most important carbon reservoirs. They also provide and preserve enormous biodiversity. Forest protection projects, like this one, ensure that forests are protected in the long term. Different type of trees store different amounts of carbon per hectare. Particularly high amounts of carbon are stored in the vegetation and soil of tropical swamp forests, primary rainforests or mangroves.
By Gib Lopez, Co-Founder and COO and Camila Perez Aloi, Senior Risk Manager
When we started PayJoy five years ago, our theory was that we could unstick the credit ecosystem by providing customers with little or no access to credit with collateral in the form of smartphones and giving lenders the ability to effectively collect against overdue payments. That thesis has now been proven out in over 20 countries but faced an unprecedented test in the form of coronavirus and its impact on economies on incomes.
Fortunately, repayments powered by PayJoy have proven to be remarkably stable, with only slight repayment decreases from our pre-coronavirus levels. This pattern is consistent across mature and new cohorts as our smartphone locking technology continues to provide a powerful incentive to repay.
Before looking at our results, it’s important to acknowledge how fundamentally Covid-19 has changed consumers’ lives and the lending landscape. First, while this disease could infect anyone, it is hitting people with the least resources the hardest. These are the people that can’t take sick days, that can’t maintain distance from strangers or customers, that don’t have savings they can rely on, and can’t easily access formal credit. And while lenders have seen crises come and go, nothing really compares to what we’ve seen from the effects of the coronavirus.
Repayments have fallen off a cliff. The Economist reports that one India lender’s non-payment rates have gone from 5% to 90% in a matter of weeks. Forbes is calling this a crucible for fintechs that will force many to “partner or perish”. We’ve heard of others that have seen their repayments go to zero as customers hold on to every last dollar. Cash lenders and retailers that sell on credit will continue to struggle or go out of business entirely as long as Covid-19 keeps economies shut down and threatens to roar back in successive waves. Even those with deep pockets and sufficient funds will be forced to stop lending and sit on the sidelines.
However, across our own lending business and that of our partners, repayments have been strong with hardly a dip. When indexed to “perfect” repayment, the impact of coronavirus isn’t even noticeable. You can see this result in Fig. 1 below where we’ve tracked repayments for our last six cohorts grouped by month as compared to idealized repayments. Of course, over time, all of these lines trend downwards as more and more people cease to be perfect repayers. Without PayJoy, you could expect to see each cohort’s payments drop significantly when its Days on Book reached the first Covid-19 related impacts. At these rates, PayJoy earns a reasonable return sufficient to attract institutional capital.
Fig. 1: PayJoy Portfolio Performance compared to perfect repayment.
Now, one way to achieve this result would be to let existing customers repay and then “improve” future cohorts by tightening credit policy just to very high quality or existing customers. Of course, we did make some changes to our credit policies but these have only decreased approvals by around 5%. But, generally speaking, PayJoy has continued lending to new customers with little (Fig. 2) or no credit (Fig. 3) and their repayment has done similarly well.
Fig. 2: PayJoy Subprime Borrower Performance compared to perfect repayment. Fig. 3: PayJoy No Credit History Borrower Performance compared to perfect repayment.
So what is the PayJoy recipe for success? There are four primary ingredients.
We are bringing to bear a new, transformative technology in the PayJoy Lock that collateralizes a customer’s most valuable asset, their smartphone. This has the effect of both discouraging bad customers from taking a loan (knowing they won’t be able to use their device once they miss a payment) and encouraging good customers to stay current.
We and our partners give customers the flexibility they need in the face of volatile cash flows. If they miss a payment, they no longer have use of their smartphone, but interest doesn’t pile up and they have a strong incentive to begin repayments. And of course we always allow use of the phone to contact emergency services and can extend grace periods.
We leverage the breadth of our smartphone financing platform to collateralize a device, underwrite and identify customers, identify fraud signals in customers or the sales channel, and, where applicable, score customers based on the data on their current device.
We treat our customers with respect. One of our core values is Transparency so the customer always knows what they are agreeing to, their total repayment amount, and how this differs from an ordinary purchase or cash loan. We also understand when and why customers are likely to miss payments and have based our offerings on that knowledge.
While the challenges posed by coronavirus are unprecedented, we’ve found that our approach can protect lenders from the worst effects. If you are interested to see how PayJoy could prevent lost revenue and profit for your credit purchases or on your loan portfolio, please contact us today at partners@payjoy.com to help us get billions worldwide access to credit.
In previous PayJoy blog posts, we highlighted the problem of lending to the underbanked and how PayJoy technologies are helping to solve this problem. Core technologies like the PayJoy Lock and Score enable our partners to reach underserved consumers by solving the collateral and credit scoring challenges. These consumers often don’t have other ways of getting the credit they badly need, especially in the current times of heightened liquidity risk.
The World Bank image below shows the severe lack of credit, especially in emerging markets. And this is before the COVID-19 crisis.
As we scale with our partners to serve more users, we believe it continues to be important that we protect the privacy of these users. We approach this holistically and have taken steps to safeguard user privacy in our products, our processes, and through collaborations with our partners. This post covers these aspects.
Let’s start with our products. To build products, we’ve tried to make conscious technology choices and have designed privacy into our products. We’ve been careful to use leading off-the-shelf technologies that have a strong roadmap. On the server side, we use public cloud infrastructure hosted on AWS. We use modern, public-key cryptography and https across the board so that we take maximum advantage of the innovation that will come on the world’s largest user infrastructure.
In addition to best-in-class technology choices, we have implemented a layered approach (a best practice) to people and systems who access data. A good example of putting this to practice is with sensitive customer data. Quick recap: in markets where our Finance partners require a PayJoy Score to offer finance, we record a limited amount of such data (such as SMS) – with explicit user consent – for credit scoring. This ultimately enables financially excluded users to get and build credit in conditions where no alternatives exist.
A small number of PayJoy employees access this data on a strict need-to-know basis, for instance, to build and test the systems that calculate or update a credit score. This data is hosted on separate servers with highly restricted access. The systems access this data via a modern, microservices architecture, which further limits access to a single, controlled interface.
In addition to layering, we proactively implement a data retention policy even when several governments (in our target markets) don’t mandate data retention policies. We wipe out all sensitive user data within 12 months of originally recording it.
Let’s now consider PayJoy’s mobile apps. The PayJoy Lock is installed on the phones of end-users. The strength of this lock makes it possible for our Finance partners to be comfortable in lending money to underserved users by using the phone as collateral. Making the lock strong enough to withstand fraud requires PayJoy to have the right level of device locking capability during the term of the loan. We work with OEMs to enable the minimally required level of control – while preserving user privacy – to enable device locking during the term of the loan.
Back to the end-user. To begin the process, our finance and retail partners explicitly describe the Lock-based financing model and its implications to the user. Users typically sign contracts to this effect. We don’t stop at human education. After this, the PayJoy mobile app discloses the device access we require and seeks user consent. We do this using a UI which clearly explains what capabilities we need and why.
The app starts with an introduction and visual reminder of the reasons the PayJoy App needs locking capabilities (including device control required to lock). This is in clear language. The user has a clear choice to deny consent at each step of the process.
The user has the clear option not to activate. The PayJoy App reminds them (once) of the impact of declining, then makes it easy for the user to make the choice without further pop-ups or questions.
Another example comes from PayJoy’s anti-fraud measures. To protect the majority of our trustworthy and deserving users, PayJoy matches a National ID with a Selfie. Along the way, the app provides clear reasons why it takes this step. Once successful, it also auto-fills ID information into the subsequent application form to save the majority of our users error-prone and repetitive data-entry steps.
Let’s now consider our OEM collaborations. Overall, we see this as an opportunity to better serve our users. We work with OEMs in two technology modes. We either use the OEM’s Device Management software or we enable OEMs to use PayJoy Access. Access makes devices ready for PayJoy Lock-style financing when an OEM does not have the required Device Management software in place.
Consider Device Management mode. On Samsung phones, we use Samsung’s Knox Platform for Enterprise (KPE), a mature platform with extensive privacy controls. It also enforces added user transparency. Users clearly see the level of device controls and access required for the PayJoy software to run successfully. Once the term of the loan is completed, PayJoy gives up all control of the device.
Using PayJoy Access, OEMs update the phone’s firmware to ensure secure provisioning and activation of the PayJoy Lock. These updates prevent malicious parties from “breaking the lock” by disabling or removing the PayJoy software. It is important for the OEM to be fully aware of what the PayJoy software is doing and what access it has. To support this, PayJoy uses an open communication process to collaborate with OEMs. Specifically, PayJoy shares source code, design, and test documentation to help OEMs validate their implementation, as well as to understand PayJoy’s design. Our OEM partners such as d.light perform significant testing in-region to ensure that the Lock behaves optimally from the perspective of privacy and viability for consumer finance.
Finally, all devices that implement PayJoy Access pass Google’s Compatibility Test Suite (CTS), an industry expectation for Android devices. CTS covers OEM firmware including the OEM’s PayJoy Access implementations.
This then completes the cycle of designing and implementing privacy for our users. Through our use of leading off-the-shelf technology, open internet protocols, layered security and transparent OEM collaboration, PayJoy has worked to ensure the right balance of user privacy and a viable financing model.
The Road Ahead: We will continue our commitment to enhancing user privacy as we innovate with our financing model. Our plans include increased support for Data Location as these requirements get clarified by governments in our target markets. In addition, we will continue to take advantage of underlying platform improvements. For instance, we will fully support Android 11’s improved privacy controls. Finally, we will continue to experiment with requiring lighter device controls but serve our users in emerging markets with much-needed credit.
We absolutely encourage prospective PayJoy clients to pilot the PayJoy Lock with our 30 day unlimited activations free trial before making the technical investment to integrate with Lock API. To make pilots faster to deploy, we’ve built a bulk upload feature that enables clients to remotely update Locks across their customers’ devices via csv upload. You can update up to 5,000 locked devices at once with no engineering work needed.
What’s next
We’ve launched Bulk Upload to everyone with the following features built so far:
Activate Locks
Update your customer’s expiration when they’ve made a payment
Set Locks to inactive and removable if your customer’s loan is complete
We’re going to keep rolling out more Bulk Upload features to have parity with our Lock API. By the end of December 2019, you will be able to, without any engineering, be able to make the following changes to your customers’ Locks:
See all of the bulk upload csv files you’ve submitted to audit your changes (coming soon!)
Pre-claim
Change phone and SIM numbers
Get an offline code to send to your customer if they don’t have internet connectivity to make sure their Lock date is extended
A new look for Dashboard
We coincided building the bulk update feature with a new UI refresh of our Lock Dashboard. We designed the Dashboard to be cleaner, more user-centric for you to try out the Lock on your own and set up a pilot with your team, and easier to customize your Lock app with your own logo, and set up team permissions. Sign up or log in to take a tour!
Try out the Lock for free
It is now easier than ever to take advantage of our 30 day free trial, and then upgrade by purchasing one of our Lock bundles. If you’re a lender in an emerging market interested in securing your customers’ loans with smartphones using the PayJoy Lock, start a pilot with us today.
Lanzamientos: Haz pruebas piloto con nuestros desarrolladores
Alentamos a nuestros clientes prospecto que realicen experimentos con nuestra prueba gratuita de 30 días antes de realizar una inversión para integar nuestra API de Lock a su sistema. Para hacer el despliegue de las pruebas piloto más rápido, hemos desarrollado la funcionalidad de carga múltiple, que permite actualizar los Locks de sus clientes de manera remota con un archivo csv. Es posible actualizar unos 5,000 dispositvos de una vez sin trabajo de ingeniería.
Un recorrido de la funcionalidad:
Qué sigue:
Hemos lanzado la Carga Múltiple para todos nuestros clientes con las siguientes capacidades:
Implementaremos más funciones de Carga Múltiple para estar en sincronía con nuestra API de Lock. Hacia el fin de diciembre de 2019, ustedes serán capaces de – si ayuda de ingenieros, hacer los siguientes cambios a los Locks de sus clientes:
Ver todas las cargas de archivos CSV que se han realizado para auditar cambios
Cambiar números telefónicos y de SIM
Apartar el IMEI de los teléfonos que aprovisionarán con un Lock
Generar un código offline para enviar a tu cliente en caso de que no tengan conexión y poder extender el plazo de su Lock
Activar Locks
Actualizar la fecha de expiración de sus clientes una vez que han realizado un pago
Modificar el estado del Lock a Inactivo o Removible una vez que el financiamiento de su cliente ha concluido
El dashboard estrena look
Hemos hecho coincidir la funcionalidad de carga múltiple con con una nueva Interfaz de Usuario para el Dashboard de nuestro Lock. Diseñamos el tablero para ser más ordenado y centrado en el usuario para que realicen pruebas piloto, personalicen su App de Lock con su Logo y configuren los permisos de su equipo. Regístrese o acceda aquí para tomar un tour.
Pruebe el Lock si costo
Es más sencillo que nunca aprovechar nuesra prueba gratuita de 30 días y posteriormente adquirir uno de nuestros paqutes de Lock. Si es un acredor en un mercado emergente interesado en asegurar los préstamos de sus clientes a través de su smartphone, realice una prueba piloto hoy mismo haciendo clic aquí.
PayJoy ofrece evaluación crediticia de
clase mundial. Hemos desarrollado una plataforma de evaluación basada en los
datos del celular y la integramos a nuestra aplicación; a este nuevo producto
lo hemos llamado “Score”.
Score ha reducido los impagos de nuestros clientes de teléfonos financiados y de préstamos personales en un 50% y sumada a nuestro Lock, hemos disminuido los impagos entre clientes sin cuentas de banco en un 60%; lo que significa que vastas cantidades de clientes que previamente no hubieran podido ser atendidos de manera digital, ahora son sujetos a servicios financieros y créditos digitales con atractivos márgenes. Nuestros resultados iniciales muestran que Score es 3 veces más fuerte que las calificaciones de crédito actuales. Estamos muy entusiasmados por que esto creará un nuevo camino a la inclusión financiera para miles de millones de clientes que están fuera del sistema financiero existente.
Trabajar a la par con Score y Lock es posible para cualquier cliente con un teléfono inteligente, con la suma de ambos productos es posible atender a los usuarios incluso si no cuentan con un historial crediticio o cuenta de banco. El Score de PayJoy está listo para implementarse en México; puede encontrar toda la documentación aquí. Tenemos acuerdos comerciales en muchos de los países en los que operamos para obtener datos y crear una calificación crediticia; estamos trabajando para ofrecer el producto en todos los lugares en los que operamos con la colaboración y consentimiento de nuestros socios y clientes.
Tres ejemplos reales de Score
Ejemplo 1. Vender un teléfono a crédito
El vendedor de mostrador
descarga la app de PayJoy en el teléfono del cliente
Tu sistema POS obtiene de nuestro
Score la calificación crediticia, generada a partir de los datos del
dispositivo; se le explican los términos de la oferta al cliente
La app de PayJoy se instala
en el teléfono que será adquirido, se cierra la venta y el cliente sale con un
teléfono nuevo. El desarrollo de PayJoy te recordará los periodos de pago del
cliente y te ayudará a asegurarlos en caso de morosidad
Ejemplo 2. Préstamos en efectivo de una casa de empeño
El vendedor de mostrador
descarga la app de PayJoy en el teléfono del cliente
El vendedor accede a la página
web de PayJoy para determinar la calificación crediticia y en caso de ser
aprobado, comunicarle al cliente los términos de la oferta
Se realiza el préstamo y el cliente
sale de la tienda con su teléfono y el empréstito, quedando en garantía la
funcionalidad del dispositivo; el software de PayJoy será utilizado para
limitar el funcionamiento del Smartphone en caso de morosidad o impago.
Ejemplo 3. Préstamos en efectivo desde una app móvil
El cliente solicita un préstamo
a través de tu aplicación móvil
Tu aplicación descarga en el
teléfono del cliente la API de PayJoy y ésta obtiene la calificación crediticia,
comunicándole al usuario los términos de la oferta a través de tu interfaz
El préstamo es otorgado al
cliente ya sea a través de un movimiento bancario, o por retiro sin tarjeta en
un cajero automático. El Lock de PayJoy será utilizado para limitar el
funcionamiento del Smartphone en caso de morosidad o impago
¿Cómo se ve un Score de PayJoy?
Nuestra calificación crediticia es representada con un puntaje entre 250 y 850, así como 5 características adicionales para que nuestros aliados puedan otorgar mejores condiciones a sus clientes. Los detalles los puedes encontrar en la documentación de la API de Score. Estamos seguros de que nuestros Score y Lock permitirán a nuestros socios comerciales determinar la disposición y habilidad de pago de sus clientes, cosa que hasta ahora, era imposible.
Qué hace al Score de PayJoy único
Score permite bancarizar a quienes no tienen acceso a dichos servicios
Nuestro Score funciona para los individuos que no cuentan con historial crediticio (25% de nuestros clientes en México no tienen antecedentes de crédito*), sin cuenta bancaria (45% de nuestros clientes en México no tienen una*) y sin contar con negocio propio (84% de nuestros clientes en México son empleados públicos, privados o forman parte de la economía informal).
Los acreedores utilizan Score para determinar de manera óptima qué prestar y cómo hacerlo basados en la calificación crediticia, mientras que el Lock permite la colateralización del teléfono del cliente durante el periodo de pago. Estos productos juntos ofrecen de manera incomparable la capacidad de prestar utilizando dispositivos móviles, lo cual es crítico, considerando que casi ¾ partes de los 710 millones de personas con posibilidad de suscribirse por primera vez a servicios móviles serán de las regiones Asia-Pacífico y África subsahariana. Además, 1,400 millones de personas comenzarán a usar internet móvil por vez primera, con un gran total de 9,200 millones de conexiones a través de SIM hacia el año 2025.
Score predice hasta con tres veces mayor precisión que la calificación de un buró de crédito
A pesar de que los datos en México incluyen microfinanciamientos, nuestro Score arroja tres veces más predicciones cuando se comparan a los mismos prestatarios lado a lado.
¿Cómo puedo obtener Score?
Nos da gusto que preguntes. Hemos hecho accesible este producto a algunos socios comerciales, sólo haz clic en el botón “Asóciate con Nosotros” en nuestra página de internet.
PayJoy now provides world-class credit scoring. We have launched a credit score based on smartphone data and integrated it into our app; we call this new product Score. Score reduces defaults on our own consumer phone-purchase and cash-loan portfolios by up to 50%. In combination with Lock we have seen default rates for unbanked consumers drop by 60% which means large populations of consumers that could not be served digitally and at scale can now profitably be offered digital credit and financial services. Our initial results show that the PayJoy Score is 3x stronger than existing credit scores. We’re optimistic that this will provide a new path for financial inclusion for billions of consumers who are financially excluded from existing credit systems.
Score + Lock can work for any consumer with a smartphone. With Score + Lock you can serve your users even if they have no credit history, no bank account, and no business ownership. PayJoy Score is now ready for use in Mexico with full documentation here. We have in-place agreements in multiple geographies to gather data to build out a score. Ultimately, we plan to offer Score in every geography where our clients operate. All of this will happen with the consent of the consumers and partners.
3 real-life examples of Score
Example 1 – Selling a new phone on credit
Your store clerk downloads the PayJoy app on a consumer’s existing smartphone.
Your store’s point-of-sale retrieves the device’s credit score from Score API and you communicate to the customer the terms of their offer.
The PayJoy app is downloaded onto the phone being purchased, the sale is completed, and the customer leaves with a new phone. PayJoy’s Lock technology is used by you to remind the borrower about payment cycles and to help secure payment in the event of default.
Example 2 – Cash loans from a physical store, like a pawn shop
Your store clerk downloads the PayJoy app on a consumer’s existing phone.
Your store clerk uses their PayJoy website account to view your score details, the consumer is approved and you communicate the terms of the offer to the consumer.
You complete the loan and the consumer walks out of the store with a usable phone and cash loan that is using their phone as equity. PayJoy’s Lock technology is used by you to lock/unlock the phone according to repayment.
Example 3 – Cash loans from your mobile app
A consumer applies for a loan through your mobile app.
Your app automatically downloads PayJoy’s app onto the consumer’s phone, retrieves Score from the Score API, and your app displays the terms of the consumer’s final offer.
Cash is dispensed to the customer, either to their bank account directly or as a 1-time ATM withdrawal for the unbanked. PayJoy’s Lock technology is used to lock/unlock the phone according to repayment.
What exactly does a PayJoy Score look like?
Score currently delivers a 250-850 credit score as well as 5 additional credit features that clients can use to make better credit decisions for unbanked consumers that have a smartphone. All of these details are explained in our Score API documentation. We believe that Score and Lock enable our clients to determine willingness and ability to pay for consumers where that is currently not possible today.
What makes PayJoy Score unique?
Score makes the unbanked bankable.
Score performs for individuals with no credit history (25% of our MX portfolio have no credit history*), no bank account (45% of our MX portfolio have no bank account*), and no existing business ownership (84% of our MX portfolio are employed by the private sector, public sector, or informal economy*).
Lenders use Score to optimally decide who to lend to and how at the point of underwriting, while the Lock product enables the collateralization of the borrower’s phone during repayment. These two products together provide unparalleled ability to lend using mobile devices – critical considering that almost ¾ of the 710M people expected to subscribe to mobile services for the first time over the next 7 years will come from the Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan African regions, with an additional 1.4B people starting to use mobile internet and for the first time and a total of 9.2B SIM connections by 2025.¹
Score is 3x as predictive as a Credit Bureau score
Although Mexico’s credit data includes microfinance data, our smartphone based score still yields 3x the predictive power when compared side by side for the same borrowers.
How do I get the Score ?
We’re glad you asked! We’re making this available to select beta partners at this point. Just click the “Partner With Us” button on our home page.
By Chris Moore, Nam Pham, Mauricio Castaneda, Dominique Friedl, Jenny Jin
In rural areas in Africa and Indonesia, our users who are financing a smartphone with the PayJoy Lock might experience a poor user experience if they are not able to update their device once they’ve made a payment due to lack of 3G/4G/LTE network coverage.
This will differ from country to country but some of our clients estimate that 70% of their customers live in rural areas with poor connectivity. In GSMA’s 2018 Mobile Connectivity World Index, most of the markets that PayJoy operates in LatAm, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia have low to medium LTE coverage at best.
Introducing Unlock Offline
Our new Unlock Offline feature allows users to enter a code into the PayJoy app that will update their amount of credit and keep their phone from locking, no internet necessary. This feature is core to our social mission of enabling the world’s underbanked to access credit by designing with their contexts in mind.
A quick overview of the Unlock Offline feature
1) Via Lock API, a PayJoy partner requests a code for a customer who is currently offline.
2) The client sends the generated code to the user by a phone call, SMS, or other user-accessible way.
3) After receiving the code, the user enters it in the following dialogue box that appears in their PayJoy app’s home screen when we detect that the phone is offline.
For security measures, we accept 5 attempts daily per user’s device and will monitor any suspicious fraud activities.
Baobab+ a subsidiary of Baobab Group, is a leader in digital and financial inclusion and is a social business committed to providing access to energy and digital. Baobab+ commercialize innovative products with financing solutions that meet the needs of local populations in Africa. In partnership with PayJoy, Baobab+ is now unleashing the potential of Senegal by making incredible Smartphones accessible through a PAYG offer which now makes Smartphones accessible to all.
India’s feature phone shipments grew faster than smartphone shipments for the very first-time in 2018 thanks in part to an innovative finance program
According to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service, in 2018, India’s overall mobile phone shipments grew 11% and smartphone shipments grew 10% with feature phones growing faster than smartphones (11%) during the year for the first time ever, driven by the Jio Phone. Reliance Jio was the overall market leader across all handset types in 2018, with a market share of 21% and captured 38% of the feature phone segment in just over a year with its compelling value proposition compared to normal 2G feature phones. This was also recently covered in the WSJ.
Source: Counterpoint Research Market Monitor 2018
Reliance Jio’s compelling value proposition
The JioPhone was launched in July 2017 by the Indian mobile network operator Reliance Jio and was the first affordable 4G VoLTE smart feature phone, powered by KaiOS. The JioPhone, introduced as “India ka Smartphone” was launched at a so called “effective price” of Rs. 0 ($0). However, this was not exactly true. Consumers had to pay a security deposit of Rs 1,500 ($21.60) which was refundable if they returned the phone in 3 years and only if they paid for a Reliance Jio plan during the 3 years. Total cost to the consumer was Rs 6,000 ($86.40) or Rs 4,500 ($64.80) if the device was returned so certainly not free! Reliance Jio has certainly created a compelling value proposition that has been profitable for the company and gotten consumers access to the products they want. According to Counterpoint, half of the more than 100 million subscribers added since the launch of the JioPhone was thanks to this feature phone. Reliance Jio has changed the mobile economy in India by essentially creating a Post-Paid for Pre-Paid plan that tied customer loyalty to the mobile network operator.
The challenge in extending credit in emerging markets
The fundamental challenge mobile network operators or any company for that matter has in extending credit in emerging markets to purchase a smartphone – is the lack of collateral and underwriting data which is why Reliance Jio requires a security deposit and offers the lowest cost 4G handset possible. Mobile network operators would do better if they were able to find a way for consumers to pledge their smartphone as collateral. This would allow mobile network operators to offer better smartphones with little or no security deposit or perhaps even subsidized if the consumer agreed to a minimum mobile service recharge rate per year.
Extending credit by leveraging innovative technologies
PayJoy gives mobile network operators and finance companies a tool to collateralize smartphones that aren’t just the lowest cost phones. With our patented Lock technology, which resists any efforts to be deleted from the mobile device until the subsidy is recovered, we can increase recharge repayments and minimize the risk of late or defaults. We have developed a user experience on our lock that helps customers to track and make their recharge payments seamlessly via the app. When users are late on a recharge payment, they don’t get charged any late fees. Instead the PayJoy Lock limits their app and call functionalities until they make their recharge payment, and instantly restores normal phone functionalities. Through this new “Recharge” form of device subsidy that mirrors the “pay as you go” solar distribution model, we enable users to afford getting a smartphone by using it as collateral, and we enable operators to onboard the next billion users to smartphones and full connectivity.
A New Model Powered by PayJoy
Below is a sample of the kind of model that could be powered by the PayJoy Lock.
5.5″ Full View display 5MP rear camera, 5MP Front Camera 1GB RAM, Quad-Core Processor Android™ 8.1 (Go edition) Standard unlocked price: $80 PayJoy Locked price: $30 Recharge: $4.5/1.5GB for 12 months
PayJoy: Finance for the Next Billion 