Banking on Buy Now, Pay Later

Many would look at up-and-coming disruptors as competitors or think there wasn’t any room for another solution. But Bryce Deeney saw it as a challenge that he was willing to accept.

This meant deep diving into a growing trend he began to notice taking shape in the banking and finance world: buy now, pay later. Increasingly, consumers were gravitating to third-party fintechs that offered this, as most large financial institutions — including the one Bryce worked for — weren’t yet offering it. It was then the lightbulb went on.

At the time, Bryce was working as head of product at a large financial institution. After identifying a clear gap in the company’s offerings, he jumped on the opportunity to develop the service himself. Nearly a year later, equipifi was born.

Today, equipifi — an enterprise SaaS platform that allows banks and credit unions to offer buy now, pay later services to their customer base — is realizing hockey-stick-like growth. This is in part due to the startup’s leadership, the growing demand for this type of solution, and the mentality shift that has occurred in the financial industry. Where large institutions traditionally saw fintechs as a threat, they now look to them as partners and a way to remain relevant — and this has created a golden opportunity for equipifi.

Check out the full conversation to learn more about equipifi’s path to success.

What is equipifi?

Equipifi is an enterprise SaaS platform built to serve predominantly credit unions and banks so they can offer buy now, pay later to their customer base.

How did equipifi come to be?

Like any other startup, there are a lot of moving pieces. I was head of product at a fairly large financial institution prior to founding equifi. I was tasked with launching products for our card holders so we could stay relevant as a financial institution and have the ability to compete with third-party fintechs out there — like the PayPals of the world. I saw a lot of our cardholders were utilizing buy now, pay later from third-party companies but we didn’t have a way of offering that.

How long did you spend building it prior to launch?

Roughly a year. Going from a napkin to a pretty firm concept took about a year, and then last summer my two co-founders and I decided it was ripe for the taking and we start building it officially. It was roughly a year to go from concept to building out the company.

What’s been one of the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?

There are challenges that come with every phase. Specifically, within the market that we’re in, there are challenges in selling into very high enterprise customers. You have to know their appetite for buying new technology or concepts. There’s always the market challenge and you can only overcome that with sheer will and determination and unlocking those different proof points.

I think building out a team is always a challenge. This isn’t my first time building a team so having experience there definitely helps.

Fast forward to today, some of the challenges are on the scaling side. How do we go from 10 months ago when we had five team members to now 25? Now that we are getting across the finish line of turning enterprise customers live, what does customer success and scaling within our customer base actually look like?

How has the fintech industry shifted?

There has been a really big shift the last few years as the incumbents or legacy players of the world are realizing that the speed of technology has far surpassed them. Rather than trying to build things, they have to partner and if they don’t partner, then they will die eventually.

I actually think the pandemic has helped in some ways because it’s created a shift towards things like transformation, digitization and partnerships. A few years ago, banks used to look at fintech as a threat, and now they look at it as almost like their lifeboat to go onto the next generation.

What’s one of the best things you’ve done for the company?

We just raised our Series A so we had a really fun party at my house where we just brought everybody and their families together. Since we’re a covid-birthed company, it was the first time that our entire team has actually spent time together in person. That was a lot of fun.

I think building a new company from nothing opens a lot of opportunities to build a culture that you really want. Things like having radical transparency built into the fabric of our company not only fosters innovation internally, but also allows people to talk about their struggles or maybe some of the problem issues that they’re running into. It also fosters innovation.

For example, when you bring in an engineer who has worked in corporate America their entire life what is one of the benefits that we can provide them as an early stage startup? It’s access to information on how to build a company and how to take an idea and turn that into a sellable product. I think the most fun thing for me has been taking people from massive organizations that have never had access to these types of processes and learnings and just really pulling them into what it means to actually build a startup.

What brought you to the StartupAZ Collective?

When my two co-founders and I decided to pursue this we knew our path was raising capital. I really wanted to connect locally. In the previous startup, we built a very successful company but we weren’t really plugged into Arizona. I knew I wanted to do it differently this time. I had reached out to Brandon (fromer CEO of StartupAZ)…and I didn’t really know what I was getting into other than it looked like a good place to connect.

Since then I’ve met Diana (current CEO of StartupAZ) and some of the other folks who are actively involved in this community. One of the benefits that I’ve seen is actually hearing the raw, authentic stories of founders who are a couple steps ahead of where I’m at today. It’s helpful to know they were able to overcome some of those big challenges that early stage companies face.

What are you looking forward to with the StartupAZ Collective?

Creating a feedback loop where I can learn from others, and hopefully I can provide some valuable feedback to other founders who are maybe at an earlier stage than me. I might not be able to provide exact advice, but maybe how my team overcame that. Or maybe we haven’t overcome it yet. We can just share in that struggle together.

What advice would you give to other startup founders in Arizona?

Getting plugged into a community where we can have like-minded folks who are going through the same exact thing has been a huge benefit to me personally, not only within the company, but also for my mental health. It’s been really helpful to have those folks around me. Being a founder can be extremely lonely. You feel like all the weight and the pressure are on you. Having other people to share those feelings and emotions and strategies with is really helpful.