Personal finance management app maker Fintonic has teamed up with ecommerce behemoth Amazon to offer users in Spain interest free purchases on the local Amazon.es marketplace.
The 0% finance offer is being timed to coincide with the annual Black Friday shopping fest that kicks off later this month.
Qualifying Fintonic users can apply for Amazon Gift cards ranging from €200 to €1,000 via the app — and be able to defer payments for up to four months.
The balance of the offered gift cards has a shelf life of ten years before expiry.
Fintonic is asking interested users to sign up to a guest list in time for the offer to launch on November 23.
The Madrid-based fintech startup offers a free app for consumers to manage their money, focusing on Spanish speaking markets. It pairs a financial assistant app with a brokering business model that’s based on taking a commission for any third party financial products its users sign up for.
Product suggestions are powered by a proprietary credit score derived from the visibility its app gets once users link their bank and credit card accounts.
This FinScore index assigns users a rate of between 0 and 900 points, based on analyzing more than 160 variables, including via accessing users’ financial history. And it’s using the score to underpin the Amazon interest free offer now.
Fintonic says users will need a FinScore of 450 or higher to obtain the 0% interest Amazon offer.
Its system means even new Fintonic users could obtain the 0% financing deal.
“That is the beauty,” says founder an CEO Lupina Iturriaga. “From the very first moment that you are a Fintonic user you can start shopping at Amazon interest free and payback within four months.
“When you launch Fintonic’s app, in less than two minutes you have all your financial data aggregated, and in less than five minutes you can obtain the interest free funding.”
The collaboration — via the Amazon Incentives team in Spain — looks intended to give Fintonic’s app a boost in the region, given the general brand visibility and clout of Amazon.
Fintonic says it has more than 500,000 active users at this stage, although it also operates in Chile and Mexico. (A year ago it reported 400,000+ users in its first two markets). It also raised a €25M Series B round a year ago.
At the same time, the collaboration looks good for Amazon — encouraging regional shoppers to spend more than they might otherwise via its local marketplace. Given that the Amazon experience in Spain can be a tad hit and miss.
The local marketplace is definitely less slickly functioning than other European markets where the company has invested more in local warehouse and shipping. For Spanish shoppers that translates into limited inventory, variable prices and often very slow shipping times. But 0% finance does offer a new incentive.
Source: TechCrunch
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