Adding innovation into the shopping cart
Can attractive payment schemes entice us to spend more online?
We all know how it’s like shopping online. We add things into our shopping cart but we often never check them out. In fact, according to independent research firm Statista, 77.3% of all online retail orders are abandoned instead of purchased. Shopping cart abandonment is one of the largest obstacles that e-commerce retailers have to overcome, and it affects both small and large businesses alike.
This is the problem that hoolah, a fintech start-up providing instalment payments with zero interest, is hoping to tackle. hoolah helps merchants by allowing consumers to increase their personal affordability with a buy-now-and-pay-later option, enabling payment in four equal instalments. Recently completing a seven-figure seed funding round, hoolah is evidently moving in the right direction.
We sat down with Arvin Singh, hoolah’s co-founder and chief operating officer, at the DBS Asia X Fintech Festival Lab Crawl to find out more about his entrepreneurial journey, his thoughts around innovation and what’s next for his budding fintech start-up.
1. What inspired you to embark on the path of entrepreneurship?
During my five years in Singapore, I spent an extensive amount of time in the start-up community. From mentoring at fintech start-up bootcamps, to driving fintech engagement for Visa across Asia Pacific, I’ve had the chance to work with a variety of entrepreneurs and their start-up businesses. It is a shared passion that I have with my co-founder, Stuart, and our joint involvement in the fintech community was a massive motivation for us to take on the challenge of building our own business. We’re both inspired by the idea of building a sustainable, responsible company that creates real value for consumers and merchants alike.
2. How has hoolah helped spur innovation in the fintech industry?
We’ve brought a deep-tech approach to assessing the consumer risk element of running our business. This means maintaining a seamless customer check-out experience while still capturing the right data elements to minimise our risk. It challenges current convention that is predicated on bringing a customer to a separate experience to have them fill in a lot of personal details and then wait for an extended period before they find out whether they qualify to leverage a payment solution. This is critical to maintaining the excellent customer experience that our merchant partners already invest their time and effort into defining.
3. How does hoolah create stronger relationships between merchants and shoppers?
Our business model helps merchants increase their top-line sales while consumers gain access to the products they want and need while maintaining responsible affordability. The problem that merchants face is that more than 75% of their shopping baskets are abandoned and one of the key reasons is affordability. Consumers consider their financial position at that specific moment in time and conclude whether they are comfortable paying the full amount to get the product.
By utilising hoolah in a responsible manner, consumers can now afford the products they need and want, which allows them to make a faster decision on the purchase. The merchant wins, the consumer wins and the relationship that is built between the two sides grows, which is the real moment where loyalty is created.
4. What is the impact of the introduction of fintech to the banking ecosystem?
Banks provide an opportunity for partnerships when it comes to fintech companies like hoolah. We are actively pursuing active partnerships with multiple banks in Singapore and DBS has taken a strong stance in providing these opportunities for fintech start-ups. The DBS Asia X space is a great example of this.
5. Does innovation change the way people or businesses see money?
Innovation is changing the way consumers spend their time and how they perceive value creation in financial services. Expectations of what good consumer experience looks like have been set by the large technology companies. For a start-up or a traditional financial services provider to compete, the baseline expectations for consumers needs to be met first and then innovation can happen on top. A recent Bain & Company survey ranked consumer perception for Amazon “nearly as high as banks for trust with their money”.[1]
6. Under the backdrop of an increasing number of fintech start-ups, do you think regulators will scrutinise the industry more closely?
The number of companies in an ecosystem shouldn’t be a trigger point for more regulation. The specific activity, impact to the economic landscape and operating risks are more relevant considerations. I think many fintech companies recognise the potential impact that they can have on their customers, especially with the data they have access to, and they treat this with the greatest care.
In Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is accessible and open to conversations with fintech companies to understand their businesses in detail. This two-way conversation is important and allows the MAS to identify where the trends are in the fintech ecosystem. If this is maintained and the fintech companies have a cycle of continuous feedback from the regulator and vice-versa, then the expectations for both sides should be aligned.
7. Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?
Find the right partners to work with! I know it has been stated over and over by other entrepreneurs but finding partners that complement your skillsets, challenge you and help you grow is extremely important. We’ve been lucky to pull together the team that we have, and we continue taking our time to add each new team member as they are a critical part of establishing our culture.
Arvin Singh is co-founder and chief operating officer of hoolah, a fintech business providing instalment payments with zero interest. He was one of the panellists for the panel discussion on “Entrepreneurs disrupting Asia’s finance industry” at the DBS Asia X Fintech Festival Lab Crawl that took place on 15 and 16 November 2018.
[1] https://www.bain.com/insights/can-amazon-take-customer-loyalty-to-the-bank/
