FinTech Pismo Debuts Digital Lending Service

Brazil’s Pismo has debuted a lending tool to respond to increased demand for digital banking.

“Financial institutions have become used to selecting from a series of ‘Lending-in-a-Box’ solutions, which must be inserted into their existing infrastructure,” Faisal Khan, the FinTech’s head of lending, said in a blog entry Tuesday (March 7).

“This can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. With Pismo, the process is as simple as connecting our APIs.”

Khan said the platform focuses on providing “effective digital-first loans to revolutionize how funds are disbursed.”

And because the company is cloud-native, it can scale quickly when needed and “offer a headless lending solution powered by a set of APIs capable of managing the entire lifecycle,” Khan added.

Pismo says its lending tool lets financial institutions create lending solutions tailored to their customers using thousands of combinations to “create and craft unique products.”

The launch of Pismo’s lending product is happening at a time when digital banking has become the default means of financial interaction for countless consumers around the world.

It’s a shift that was years in the making, and one that was sped up by the COVID pandemic. Now, PYMNTS research has found that almost 75% of customers have used digital channels to open a new account, for example, unlocking the gateway to a lifetime as a digital customer.

Mobile apps are the most common banking method of choice, used by 45% of consumers, though this number has shot up among younger generations.

Banking as a service (BaaS) is an important tool for providing the digital experiences these customers demand. It involves banks offering non-bank companies the ability to provide customers with banking services.

“The banking industry remains in flux following the tidal wave of digital innovation during the pandemic,” PYMNTS wrote recently. “A recent survey found that 25% of bankers saw BaaS as an opportunity to create new revenue streams, and 32% are currently assessing how BaaS can streamline their daily operations.”

BaaS is one of many new technologies banks are deploying to improve the customer experience, including digital account opening, data analytics and reporting and digital lending. Of the bankers surveyed by PYMNTS, 61% said investing in new digital technologies would be a key priority in the coming year.