Opening credit service Conpay.ru

Having passed through fire, water and copper pipes, stuffing cones with pitfalls and gaining invaluable experience in raising an Internet project from zero to a point of meaning, we announce the launch of Conpay.ru credit service .

Prologue

Almost half a year ago, on September 3, 2011, we started developing the credit service Conpay.ru . The task set for the team was defined very simply: to enable buyers of online stores to purchase goods on credit . But, despite the simplicity in defining this task, to solve it we had to fall out of normal life for six months and head into the murky water of financial startups. At the start of the project, the team consisted of only 3 people: one and a half programmers and one and a half managers. Nevertheless, even realizing the complexity of the task and the limitations of our own resources, we continued to work on enthusiasm and inspiration (and peppy books like Freud and Kawasaki). And finally, after several months of work and testing, we were able to launch the service.

Firstly, we have created a truly working and tested model of interaction with banks and stores. It is difficult to convey what it cost us - very little is said about this in this article.

Secondly, we wrote the loan service itself. Now this is really a convenient and useful thing. In addition to the Buy on Credit button, it includes 4 applications.

The first application: this is a credit service for the seller (online store), which allows not only to place a button on the site, but also manage credit purchases, loan applications, delivery of loan agreements, customer contacts, credit products, etc. ...

Second application:loan calculator is a convenient and visual service for choosing a profitable loan. It is the loan calculator that the user opens by clicking on the "Buy on credit" button on the online store website.

The third application: the personal account of the buyer, where he can get information about his applications and loans. Here, the buyer enters his personal data and confirms his consent to the issuance of a loan.

And finally, the fourth application is the admin panel for managing this entire system.

Model

When we just started development and wrote about it in blogs and on Habré, several tens of not the largest stores showed moderate interest in us. Unfortunately, they had to wait six months for our service to work, and some of them did not wait. Then, at the very beginning of work, we managed to reach the right people in two banks, two other representatives of other banks turned out to be regular readers of Habr and contacted us after the first publication about the idea of ​​the service (thank you, Habrahabr - for reaching out to bankers with press releases or newsletters would be impossible).

Everyone was in an enthusiastic mood. The store owners believed that the amount of loans issued for their goods would soon go to their accounts, and they would only have to count tenths of the sales growth indicators. Bank representatives expected millions of applications from us, from which it would be possible to choose bona fide borrowers and sell them loans at 90% per annum. It turned out that everything is not so simple. It turned out that everything is very complicated.

The scheme of our service at the moment looks like this:

0. We set the code of the button "Buy on credit" on the store’s website (on the product pages, product categories and on the page for choosing a payment method)

1.The buyer clicks the buy on credit button on the store’s website, selects the suitable loan in the loan calculator and sends a loan application in the buyer's personal account

2. The application, along with information about the product, the store and the terms of the loan chosen by the buyer, is transferred to banks specified by the buyer

3 . If the application is approved by one or more banks, buyer selects one arbitrary positive and confirms the acceptance decision to issue credit.

4. A notification on the approval of the loan comes to the seller’s personal account, it is proposed to choose the method of delivery of the goods and the agreement, the loan agreement is downloaded and printed.

5.The goods are delivered to the buyer along with the loan agreement. The buyer presents a passport for verification, puts a signature in the contract. The signed contract is returned to the store.

6. The signed loan agreement is delivered to the bank branch. The loan amount is transferred to the store account. Everyone is happy.

Here we can distinguish 4 main topics on which we had to rack our brains to start working according to the scheme described above.

Treaties

Firstly, it is a contractual basis. It turned out to be very difficult to legally establish a scheme of interaction between a bank, a store and our service. To do this, we had to hold more than 50 meetings with representatives of banks, write and send more than 100 official letters, hire our own lawyer (thank God, he turned out to be a good guy), prepare and do not agree on several dozen versions of contracts, acts and additional agreements. But in the end, we still got our way. At the moment, we have a fully working and elaborated procedural model that describes the scheme of the service from pressing the “buy on credit” button until the goods are delivered to the buyer and the loan amount is transferred to the store’s account. If anyone would be so interested that they would like to read these agreements, write me about it by mail,

Technology

The next topic is a technical solution that allows you to transfer and receive data from partner banks, each of which has its own technical regulations for receiving and processing loan applications. There is no point in cunning - this task was not the most difficult. In general, having worked with banks, I was not surprised to find that the level of development of their technologies on the Web is 5 years behind the current standards. Nevertheless, I had to think thoroughly about the protection of personal data and the reliability of the authorization process of the buyer and the store.

Cost

The third topic is the commercial terms of cooperation. Having lived six months in debt, we wanted to believe in future millions, at least ours, of Russian rubles. It turned out that it was not worth believing in them. In all matters relating to money, we had to be guided, first of all, by the interests of buyers and sellers (owners of online stores). As a result, getting something from banks turned out to be even more difficult than from stores.

But thanks to the stubbornness of this strategy, we managed to achieve 2 important concessions from banks. The first and main of them is the absence of any commissions for the store and the buyer. Simply put, we do not take anything from stores or from buyers. So our service can be called completely free without any guile. The second concession on the part of banks is credit products. We managed to convince banks that the buyer on the Internet, to put it mildly, is not ready to overpay 90% per annum.

Of course, the bank independently determines the set of loan products offered in each particular store (as you know, you cannot buy a phone or laptop on credit for furniture or building materials). Nevertheless, we have achieved that most of these loan products are classified as low-income and medium-income, that is, the effective interest rate is from 20% to 50% per annum.

Logistics

The fourth topic was the most difficult. It relates to the delivery of a loan agreement to the buyer. Modern banking technologies, unfortunately, do not allow remote customer identification. A digital signature will not reach the masses soon (and in Russia, most likely, never). Therefore, in order to issue a loan, the borrower must be seen in person (by the way, I still do not understand why there is no such need when issuing a credit card). And if you force the client to go to the bank, the whole point of our service is lost. The only solution is to deliver the loan agreement to the buyer at home.

But the fact is that not one of the banks with which we were negotiating agreed to use our own logistics to deliver the loan agreement to the buyer for signature. The problem is also that only a person accredited by the bank can get the right to deliver the contract to the buyer (a person who has been trained at the bank and has the appropriate status and authority from the bank). This is primarily due to the need to verify passport data and the appearance of the buyer. In addition, as the signatory in the loan agreements from the side of the bank, it is precisely the person (seller, forwarder or courier) who carries out the execution of the contract.

Since we are going to serve customers throughout Russia, we cannot limit ourselves to our own courier service. And at the moment we don’t have money for its creation. Nevertheless, we still found a solution: this is the delivery of a loan agreement with the goods. We managed to resolve the issue of vesting the seller, courier or forwarder with the necessary powers with the banks as follows: the owner or representative of the store transfers the passport and contact details of those persons who will be involved in the delivery of goods sold on credit to the bank. This can be both the store’s own couriers and courier services representatives. The Bank independently and at its own expense contacts them, invites them to a bank branch, provides training (this takes no more than 1 hour) and gives the necessary powers. Although training is a very conditional name for this process. In fact, the bank security guard jokingly tells couriers what to expect if they plan to throw the bank in any way. I myself listened. Very informative.

Other difficulties

At the moment, the main difficulties we have with finding partners. Moreover, these difficulties are associated not with the lack of interest in the service on their part (there is interest, sometimes even too much), but with an elementary lack of resources for marketing and sales.

Of course, the largest interest for banks is represented by large retail chains and the most popular stores. But in order to reach out to people who make decisions in these organizations, we need to jump above our heads. And how often this happens in countries with a low average annual temperature, it is far from a fact that the decision maker will be guided by the interests of the company, and not his own.

Restraint of interest of banks is easier to explain. While we have only a few dozen small stores behind us, we are interested in them no more than an ordinary outlet with medium traffic. Therefore, in order to reach out to other banks, we need large stores and retail chains. And then see the previous paragraph.

Epilogue

In conclusion, a little lyrics: we want to create a credit trading platform in the form of an aggregator of trading offers from online stores connected to a credit service. It will be a huge online store where you can buy everything on credit.

We also want to try to sell credit products on the Internet for education, health, tourism and leisure, etc. ... That is, in order to connect to the Conpay.ru network, it is not necessary to be an online store. And even having your own site is optional (if you really need it, you can always do it). It is only important to have a product or service that will be in demand and attract buyers.

We want to make a separate service for the B2B market. There, the buying process is much more complicated, there is a specific workflow, instead of banks, leasing companies work, the cost of the attracted customer is much higher and many other features. B2B companies, by the way, themselves became interested in the opportunity to tie an analog of our service to their business, so there is definitely an interest in the service for B2B.

Well, the last one is offline. Theoretically, we can replace with one netbook a dozen loan officers taking a seat on the trading floor. Simply put, for a point of sale (without a site or with a site without an online store), our service can also be useful.

In general, the opening of the service is, of course, a significant event, but it is already clear that we will finish it endlessly.

UPD: The discovery actually happened yesterday, but I foolishly threw my advertising and advertising topic into the E-Commerce thematic blog and for this I was immediately switched to read-only mode (read banned) for 1000 days. But the Habr seems to have forgiven me and sent an invite, for which many thanks to him.