As one of the first 24-hour digital lending services to emerge in Nigeria, Carbon truly changed the face of borrowing, for Nigerians. In 2016, Carbon (formerly Paylater)'s vision was to reduce the barrier of access to credit for Nigerians of varying income levels. With just a smartphone, users could get a loan in minutes, without any paperwork or providing collateral.
After almost five years and over ₦70bn in loans disbursed, the Carbon team is still working hard to create the best lending experience for its users, with affordable loans suited to their needs and lifestyle.
The Growth Curve
Before now, Carbon users were granted loan amounts that increased as they made timely repayments. While this rewarded users for making timely repayments and increased retention, there were users who could handle higher loan amounts, but their income levels needed to be properly verified. In this vein, Carbon sought a solution that allows it to verify users' income levels via authentic bank statements without any stress to the user or friction in the loan application process.
The Scaling Solution
Speaking to Temi Sodipo of Carbon's Credit Risk Team, he said, "We needed to know that we were giving our users the right amount of credit that struck a balance between meeting their needs and fitting their income level. We also needed a secure and fast way to obtain bank statements to verify their income.''
Mono's Statement Pages has powered Carbon with the ability to cross this hurdle with a simple integration.
''Questions like, 'Is the borrower within our acceptable risk level?', 'Does this loan match their income and present need?', are now easily answered because we have access to customer transaction history through direct, authenticated statements.''
"As a company, we're very well versed in technical API integrations, but the integration with Mono was first non-technical, and had us up and running with Statement Pages on web in no time. It was very practical. That was our favourite thing about the process."
Scaling with the right infrastructure
''Beyond the insight into users' financial history, Mono's uptime and service quality has improved the speed of obtaining bank statements, fast-tracked underwriting processes and loan decisions. This has made our users happier, grown our loan book, and potentially means more revenue for the company."
"Through a direct channel with the product specialists at Mono, we're always kept in the loop on new features, changes, and connections to more financial institutions. We have the resources we need, and whenever we have questions they're answered as quickly as we reach out."
As a key part of Carbon's lending processes, Mono is powering the team to create a more personalized lending experience for each borrower.
If your team is looking to build better financial experiences by reliably and securely connecting to financial accounts, you can request access to get started or drop us a line at hi@mono.co.
