PAGO46 Seeks financial inclusion through cash payments
- P46 CEO could not buy online when he first arrived in Chile because he did not have a debit or credit card.
- Just like him, almost 54.4% of the Latin America population does not have a card to buy online.
- With this in mind, P46 wants to achieve financial inclusion for all those individuals that depend on cash.
As to Ecuador, 23 degrees North and 23 degrees South, there are 2 billion of people who do not have a debit or credit card.P46 wants to give financial inclusion to those people.
Garland Wong CEO and co-founder of P46 had experience on this field because he created two previous applications for the Latin America region; P46 is his third approach to this type of entrepreneurship.
Our CEO always says that when he arrived in Chile he could not buy online because he did not have a debit or credit card, just like 54.4% of the inhabitants of the region in 2019, according to Acams Today.
"“For those who do not have a card, paying online is difficult, inconvenient, and costly [...] You have to leave what you are doing and go to the closest Oxxo to pay,” he said.
With this in mind, Garland started to explore solutions for all those people that, just like him, are not included in the financial system because they can only pay with cash.
Garland along with Martin Mazza, Chief Operation Officer, started the first app that “uberizes” cash, in other words, buying online and paying with cash.
“We created PAGO46 because we really wanted to make a difference in the world, and if you think about it, not many enterprises are created because they want money, most of them want to change the world, and that is exactly what we want to do,” he added.
How does PAGO46 work?
In accordance with Garland, a Socio46 —as a Rappi or Uber worker— can collect cash from a person, make a payment, and send the receipt to the customer.
Every Socios46 has an interface with a map that shows the closest service point from them —just like any Uber driver or Rappi partner—, then the customer and the socio connect via a QR code and collect the money.
All this process happens in real time, as Garland explained, because another problem he noted is that it takes two days to make payments, so the goal of the app is to make everything in real time.
“Paying in real time is what improves cash payments, and that is exactly what we want,” Garland declared.
Payment democratization
In a world without cash, Garland and Martin ensure that not using cash in Latin America is hard to imagine due to the informality that exists in the region.
In accordance with numbers calculated by the founders, almost 50% of Latin America people do not have access to a banking institution, so they aim at giving inclusion to those who depend on cash.
“Traditional banks compete for the same customer who has a credit history, a certain level of income, and a specific profile, and the same customers switch from one bank to the other, depending on the best offer they receive, but they all are in the same group,” Mazza said.
Unlike other fintech, P46 wants to reach lower socioeconomic sectors that depend on cash. Besides, Mazza ensures that tax laws in the region hinder the access of people to banking services.
In a very near future, they want to implement a mobile ATM, that is to say, withdrawing money from any site.
Today the company operates in four countries of the region: Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina. In February 2020, the company received funds from Scale Capital, Plug and Play Ventures.