Fast just got even faster.
At Paylater, we’re obsessed about speed and delighting our users.
Our service exists to meet urgent cash needs — as shown previously, a significant portion of people who take our loans do so for financial emergencies. Emergencies require immediate solutions, and our deep understanding of this is at the center of all decisions we take.
Humble Beginnings
When we launched as Nigeria’s first online-only lender in December 2015, loans were typically disbursed anywhere from 6–24 hours after approval. It was initially a very manual process, and one which required a lot of hands on deck to get done effectively. As our number of users and geographical spread quickly started to increase and we started receiving applications at all hours of the day, we just as quickly realized that the process needed to be automated to improve on our service delivery (and to stop waking up our team members at odd hours to disburse loans).
Over the next few months, we engaged a few key partners, and in December 2016, we achieved the automation and started disbursing all loans — both Paylater and the newly-introduced Paylater Plus loans of up to NGN500,000 — within 30 minutes of approval. Another first in Nigeria.
This led to some interesting results…
While the response from our users since this upgrade has been extremely positive, we kept thinking — what if we could make this even faster?
Well..
5 Minutes
Starting today, all Paylater loans will be disbursed in an average time of 5 minutes or less from loan approval.
You read that correctly. Once anyone is approved for a Paylater loan and has setup a repayment instrument, funds will be credited to the provided bank account within minutes.
This means that whether you have a medical situation to handle at 3AM on a Sunday morning, or if your DSTV subscription cuts off right in the middle of the Champions League final — you don’t have to wait very long or beg your neighbours to let you watch from the window before you receive the funds you need.
Next Steps
We’re excited about where we have come so far and where we’re going. As we add on new features and improvements, we’ll continue sharing that process with you and building our service around our users’ needs and feedback.
With that said, we’re getting back to work!
Try it out now for yourself. Download the Paylater app here.
