EXCLUSIVE — Point of sale financing provider, Blispay is looking at partnerships as its next phase of growth.
Founded in 2014, Baltimore-based Blispay provides point of sale financing for customers of small and medium-sized merchants.
BlisPay’s CEO, Greg Lisiewski, told Bank Innovation that as the company focuses on scaling itself and adding more merchants to its roster as the holiday season approaches, partnering with other service providers in the point-of-sale market space is something the company is eager to start pursuing.
“Partnerships is something we will be looking at as we continue to expand our presence,” Lisiewski said. “Merchant acquisition banks would be a good fit because Blispay can add volume to their networks; also shopping platforms like Magento e-Commerce Platform or Shopify are very interesting to us from a partnerships perspective.”
Indeed, partnerships seems like a logical step for the growing start-up, which earlier this year completed a Series A funding of around $12 million, according to Lisiewski. Investors in this round included FirstMark Capital and New Enterprise Associates. In 2016, it raised $12.75 million in seed funding, which was led by FirstMark Capital.
Headed by Lisewski (one of the early leaders at BillMeLater, which was acquired by PayPal), Blispay has come along way. Over the past few years, it has accumulated more than 500 merchant-partners, and has processed tens of million in total transactions.
“The founding principle is that there are massively underserved constituents from both sides of the transaction platform. Many merchants, because of their size, don’t have access to financing options. They don’t have the advantage that big merchants do, and so neither do their customers” he said. “We thought you could serve both sides of the transaction from a tech progressive customer friendly way, and that’s how Blispay came to be.”
Unlike another POS financing app such as Affirm that caters to the underserved or underbanked customer with an emphasis on the millennial crowd, Blispay caters to “a different segment,” Lisiewski said. Blispay’s customer base, he said, is credit responsible with a strong FICO score, and typically fall between the ages of 35-45, split evenly by gender.
In terms of how the product works: A customer is given an option to finance their purchase using Blispay at the point of sale by the merchant. Then through the Blispay app or website, the customer answers a list of questions. BlisPay then facilitates the underwriting through its banking partner, First Electronic Bank of Utah. The customer gets a digital card number that they can instantly use to make the purchase on the spot, and then will receive a physical Visa card in the coming weeks. They can use that card for everyday use.
On purchases over $199, there is no interest if the loan is paid in full within six months and customers get 2% cashback. After that, there’s a 25-day grace period, after which monthly interest applies.
Atlanta-based Total Systems is Blispay’s processing platform.
“Total Systems is a large processing firm, and as we grow in scale, we wanted a partner that can handle volume,” Lisiewski said.
In terms of its growth strategy for the rest of 2017, Blispay will be“raising our profile in the merchant community,” Lisiewski said, especially as the holiday season approaches, a period of increased retail activity when Lisiewski sees as a great opportunity for Blispay to add on additional merchants to its already growing roster.
In terms of product improvement and enhanced customer experience, Lisiewski would not elaborate on any new developments in the pipeline. Instead, he pointed to recently added features such as auto pay and touch ID.