Meet our FinTech Startup of the Year: Divido

Over the next few weeks we’ll be showcasing the winners of our Elevator Pitch LIVE 2016 competition.

This week, we’re shining the light on our FinTech Startup of the Year: Divido.

Over 200 companies applied for the competition, a number that was then whittled down to 25 finalists across the following categories: Cybersecurity, FinTech, HealthTech, PropTech and AdTech/MarTech.

On a live pitching day, a panel of five judges cast their votes to decide on one winner in each category.

Watch the short video to find our more about Divido, where the idea come from, what traction it has gained to date and what it has planned for the future.

Interviewee: Christer Holloman, CEO and founder, Divido.

Q: Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about Divido?

Sure. Divido is a technology company that lets consumers buy anything in monthly installments, whilst the seller gets paid in full right away. So, we work with retailers, we work with lenders, and we work with intermediaries or third parties.

We do three things very differently. First of all, we’re omnichannel so it works regardless of where the customer wants to transact. We’re multi-country, which means you do one integration and then that works for all your customers wherever they happen to live. And thirdly, we’re multi-lender, which means we have higher approvals and lower costs than the incumbents.

Q: And where did the idea come from?

It was really the realisation that consumer preferences are moving on – for example, think about Netflix. We used to sit down and watch TV shows when the TV networks wanted to broadcast them. Now we want to get things when we want to and we get that through services like Netflix. Same thing with Amazon – why go to a store when you can get it straight away? We see the same thing when it comes to provisional or access to credits – why go to a bank and speak to a bank manager to apply for a loan, apply for another credit card if you can be given a line of credit at exactly the moment in time when you need it, in a shop for example.

Q: What sort of traction or success have you gained so far?

So the company is three years old but we’ve been transacting and trading for the last 18 months. Back then we worked around four companies, today we have over 300 retailers on our systems, all the way from SMEs up to big brands like BMW. We are a team of 20 people at the moment and we’re looking to raise a Series A by the end of this year.

Q: So that’s one thing you’ve got on the map for this year. What else is on the radar?

We have been very focused on the UK market since day one. Now that we’ve proven out the concept, we’re focusing on international roll-out. So by the end of this year, we’re going to be live in nine countries across Europe. That is very much my focus for the next few months.