We started as a lending company and we learnt that the financial system needed to evolve to be part of these new digital economies. Most of the people working in the mobility gig economy need to rent their vehicle to work and have no access to credit. Traditional banking models are forcing millions of users out of the system due to outdated and inefficient risk assesment mechanisms, Using driving history as a credit effectively captures the risk of the customer segment we are trying to serve.

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Besides having long-term needs for credit, like purchasing a vehicle, users fase iliquidity and 70% needs urgent money from time to time. Our micro loans, consumer loans and rent-to-own car loans are designed to help our customers with their daily financial challenges as well. In some countries, mobility apps have a weekly pay day and those drivers need to wait up to a week to access their funds. The need of cash sometimes forces them to work for certain apps that have a higher cash trips rate but less security mesures in those trips as well. Through our technology, financial companies can provide different type of immediate and accesible loans for mobility gig workers through a scalable and plug-and-play solution.

In emerging markets, inflation forces users to find alternative ways of storing value. Argentina is one of the Latin American countries hit hardest by ever-increasing inflation. With an average annual inflation rate of 24% over the past 20 years in Argentina, the depreciation of the peso ranks as the most relevant issue for Argentines. To protect themselves from devaluation, people typically preserve their wealth by exchanging the Argentine peso for the US dollar. This process usually involves opening foreign bank accounts and holding onto the physical bills at home. This leaves them with no safe way to store or use their money.

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We want to enhance our value proposal by adding a USDC alternative account to our existing fiat wallet. After the implementation of the blockchain-based wallet, the user will be able to receive a Stellar address automatically, right after his KYC has been accepted. If they want to buy (or sell) USDC, they will get the transaction quote automatically in real time. We will collect the corresponding amount from the user’s national currency virtual account and will send the corresponding USDC balance to their Stellar address in a few seconds.

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This new feature will provide our users a new saving strategy in countries where unstable economies push them to escape from their own currency because of its constant devaluation. This happens in Argentina, where we are already operating, and other Latin American countries.

The SCF Startup Camp was an amazing opportunity to create a low-fi prototype and validate the idea with our users. We had amazing feedback! We submitted to the SCF Award and were recommended by the Stellar community to join the bootcamp as an instance to validate our project with mentors and users.

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The team behind the bootcamp did an amazing job helping us to follow the methodologies of the sprint and learn everything in every step of the way. The sprint is quite intense but the program's schedule and the assistance of the team made it easy to follow. If are commited to launch a product based in user feedback and validated by the community, don't miss this opportunity.

One of the most interesting aspects of technology in general and blockchain in particular, is the capability of generating a huge impact in the life of millions of users. After validating, designing and building our first prototype for 12 months, we launched our solution on January 12th of 2022. At that point, we were in direct contact with every user that used our mobile app and we got the chance to be part of amazing stories of personal development.

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Being part of the SFC Camp, gave us a new opportunity to be talking directly to our users. We decided that it would be a great idea for the founders to directly participate in the bootcamp as an opportunity to keep learning from our users, and personally building solutions for them. As founders, as time passes by, strategy takes over operations and it is important to keep doing those things that made you an entrepreneur at the beginning. Building, designing, coding... the bootcamp was a quite fresh experience where we were back at day 1 for a few hours.

Something that we have frequently heard as entrepreneurs is validating your product with users. That is what has given us the most important lesson in our path of building lending infrastructure for the underbanked. We have been performing customer discovery initiatives since the first day and it has been truly helpful in understanding our user needs and challenges that they face every day.

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¿Consumer loan with weekly installments? ¿Micro loan at a 0% interest rate through a weekly subscription? Those have been insights and discoveries that have come directly from listening to our users. The SCF Camp was a new opportunity to create a safe space where users could share their feedback and be part of the decision process that will eventually launch (or improve) a new feature.

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On of the most interesting insights that we have learnt is that only 20% of our users are able to save money through a legal and accessible way. After the interviews, most of the users that were not able to, said they would do it through our app if they had the chance!

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• Not everyone is blockchain-savvy. Even though technology is an important part of our users' lives, we learnt that 80% of the users interviewed had no knowledge about stable coins.
• Details are important. When we interview our users, we learn that wording is important… withdraw and transfer may not be understood the same way.
• Even though our users are not familiar with blockchain, they've mentioned that security is very important for them, especially during cash out.
• Automatic purchases. Some users mentioned they wanted to schedule an “automatic” purchase once they collected their wages in the fiat wallet.

In emerging markets, inflation forces users to find alternative ways of storing value. Argentina is one of the Latin American countries hit hardest by ever-increasing inflation. With an average annual inflation rate of 24% over the past 20 years in Argentina, the depreciation of the peso ranks as the most relevant issue for Argentines. To protect themselves from devaluation, people typically preserve their wealth by exchanging the Argentine peso for the US dollar. This process usually involves opening foreign bank accounts and holding onto the physical bills at home. This leaves them with no safe way to store or use their money.

‍

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We want to enhance our value proposal by adding a USDC alternative account to our existing fiat wallet. After the implementation of the blockchain-based wallet, the user will be able to receive a Stellar address automatically, right after his KYC has been accepted. If they want to buy (or sell) USDC, they will get the transaction quote automatically in real time. We will collect the corresponding amount from the user’s national currency virtual account and will send the corresponding USDC balance to their Stellar address in a few seconds.

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This new feature will provide our users a new saving strategy in countries where unstable economies push them to escape from their own currency because of its constant devaluation. This happens in Argentina, where we are already operating, and other Latin American countries.

The SCF Startup Camp is an amazing opportunity to work with mentors and experts to validate and prototype your idea. In our case, refining the use cases and gathering technical feedback from the community was really valuable. An amazingly valuable experience... ¡don't miss the chance to be a part of it!