ZestMoney improves lives of millions of Indians

ZestMoney’s unique platform uses mobile technology, digital banking, and artificial intelligence (AI) to make life more affordable by putting customers in touch with lending partners and managing their credit for them.

The challenge

In India the consumption of digital products and services is growing at a phenomenal rate. Yet, the credit card penetration is low because banks are conservative about credit decisioning processes and because young consumers do not feel drawn towards credit cards.

Focused on bringing affordability to the masses, ZestMoney aimed to build a future-ready AI-enhanced consumer lending platform that would instantly approve and disburse small-ticket loans without human interference.

Bringing in a decade of experience in fintech and software development, the founders knew how to create an infrastructure that would allow ZestMoney to adapt products quickly and repeatedly over time. India's dramatically changing financial market was pressing ZestMoney to ensure a high level of infrastructure responsiveness. A composable architecture would allow the business to react to market changes quickly by launching new products and adapting old ones.

The solution

To achieve a high level of infrastructure responsiveness, ZestMoney needed a technology partner that is flexible, secure and able to go to market quickly. Having designed ZestMoney's future business architecture accordingly, the founders chose Mambu, as it matched their philosophies around product design and customer centricity.

In just under four months ZestMoney implemented Mambu’s SaaS cloud banking platform as its main loan origination and loan management system. “When we started ZestMoney, we spent a lot of time designing our architecture, and we chose Mambu because they had the same philosophies as us, especially around product design and customer centricity. We needed an infrastructure that would allow us to adapt our product quickly and repeatedly, especially in a market like India that's changing so dramatically and quickly,” says Elizabeth Chapman, Co-founder & CEO of ZestMoney.

Since the majority of Indians fall under the thin file category due to a lack of credit history, ZestMoney’s risk engine was designed to take into account dozens of data points besides a credit score to instantly provide credit. Fundamentally, ZestMoney is able to convert any transaction, whether it is online or offline, to Equated Monthly Installments in order to increase affordability for people who currently don't have the ability to make such purchases.

ZestMoney is a contextual credit solution - a way of embedding credit alongside people's daily lives. The lender works with retailers to ensure the costs to customers are as affordable as possible - and more importantly, consumers have the transparency of their payment schedules.

The results

Thanks to Mambu’s robust platform and lender APIs, that can be integrated with any other partner, ZestMoney can scale quickly across segments. This way, the fintech is able to cater to India's large and diverse populations, by localising and handling languages in multiple regions, as well as raising and lending funds in multiple currencies. “Mambu’s composable architecture allows us to react quickly to market changes by launching new products and services and adapting old ones in weeks, even days,” adds Chapman.

Since the start of the partnership, ZestMoney has invented and launched entirely new products, often in a matter of just a few days. Focusing on scale and full automation, 89% of all ZestMoney disbursals are made without any human interaction and in record time.