JO1N: Advantages of a consumer finance broker

Our holistic approach

Attempting to offer the cheaper credit option for the buyers and SME businesses at the same time requires deep expertise in dealing with merchants of such size. We have experience in dealing with SME’s and strategy in place to bring that “right at the checkout” lending comparison tool to the UK, so both buyers and local businesses could benefit.

At the present moment, there are few to no point of sale (POS) consumer finance brokers that would allow end consumers (buyers) to choose the options and decide which lenders are they willing to proceed with, be it classic financing or interest-free options. We believe that a sustainable credit market needs more alternatives to high-cost credit and the opportunity of choice for the end-users. At present, retailers either work with one financing provider that forces buyers into entering the high-APR agreements or work with BNPL companies that lack transparency and charge merchants high fixed-fees.

Simply, no company would allow merchants to manage their entire lending stack from one single platform via a single API. With JO1N merchants get the opportunity to easily integrate all possible third-party lenders without juggling complex integrations right and offer that at the checkout. Do more like a merchant with few clicks and less-code. Online or offline, the customers will benefit from the same “one window to all banks”, while not wasting time at the checkout and filling in their credit details only once.

Entering the credit details only once, the buyer could advance to the page where one can choose the lender to borrow from and sign the contract almost instantly due to the Open Banking 90-day consent. In the meantime, benefit from the lower costs, unlike the average of 24% APR on credit cards.

Advantages

• Fast & Easy. As a merchant you can offer interest-bearing and interest-free finance in just a matter of days, giving your customers a new way to pay for their purchases. If as a merchant, you are willing to bear the cost of financing your customer’ goods, credit agreements that are interest-free and less than twelve months term are unregulated, implying no need to apply for the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) credit license to join our platform
• Cheaper. JO1N fee structure may vary depending on the product, however, we only charge the merchant a small transparent commission for our in-store and online solutions. 
• One window to many lenders. JO1N enables multiple top lenders at one back end: the more lenders, the higher the approval rate & better MDR fees as a merchant, you are certain that you will get the best fee possible while financing the transactions of your customers & near to instant approval for your customers. An in-house built platform with API interoperability to a broad panel of lenders on JO1N’s back-end allows cutting the middleman costs while boosting the sales up to 30%.
• Smart fraud prevention. Our goal is to create “one window for multiple lenders”. The decision (approved applications) from multiple lenders acts as a very good indicator for us to proceed with the approval of the transaction. Every lending organization has its scoring and risk-assessment models, however, shall, say, 3/5 onboarded lenders return with the rejection of the application via, this indicates of the potential fraud which was neglected by or missed by the rest of the lenders.
• Open Banking. Previously, before the Payment Service Directive II (PSD2) kicked in, it was simply impossible to aggregate anyhow reliable data on the client, apart from traditional credit bureau information. Now, when major financial organizations signed up for that process, competition on the market is steeper, thus broker companies like ours have a green light. Open banking capabilities allow assessing how potential borrowers spend, what financial services they have, and what utilities they use. Bank data allows us to treat our customers individually, according to their circumstances, and to ensure a better experience for everyone. Internal research shows that open banking information wins in 76% of cases when the parent company has open banking data.
• Sharing the commission. Our goal is to create “one window for multiple lenders”. The decision (approved applications) from multiple lenders acts as a very good indicator for us to proceed with the approval of the transaction. Every lending organization has its scoring and risk-assessment models, however, shall, say, 3/5 onboarded lenders return with the rejection of the application via, this indicates of the potential fraud which was neglected by or missed by the rest of the lenders.

Target Audience: underserved SME retailers

Unlike the majority of the competitors, we are going for less tech-savvy customers in areas where our competitors would not go. Large companies, such as Klarna or Zip predominantly focus on giant retailers overlooking small and medium businesses, moreover, ignoring the needs of less technologically advances sole proprietors. Additionally, it is important to note that only two known start-ups (DivideBuy & Zilch) are fully the UK founded.

Fancy features (coming soon) 🤗

Post-transaction experience – to us is an equally as important experience as a BNPL or login experience built for our customers. When we purchase products using different credit cards, usually all of our transactions are across all of the bank statements on different retailers, also it is necessary to check various emails to find the tracking information, figure out how to return something, or if willing to reorder certain products. We think that it is a huge opportunity for us to provide value to both consumers and merchants. Thinking of consolidating all of that information in one tool => that’s what we are building with our buyer dashboard, home of all your e-commerce shopping. Everything related to your experience with e-shopping. By using our platform customers will be able to build wish lists, be able to reorder products via beautiful and convenient UI and UX that combines multiple sourcing channels. Essentially, we are building an ecosystem, we start with BNPL, currently working on our Universal ID propositions, which is an intersection between PoS-financing and identity. 1-click authentication and 1-click purchases.

How JO1N works in real life?

In-store

If it is an offline product that merchant signs up => the merchant gets “JO1N Merchant Account” and operates with it over the JO1N SaaS platform in three ways: 

1) Manual. Fills in the application for the buyer manually (up to 8 minutes if a new customer or up to 2 minutes if the customer has JO1N account ready in place)

2) Semi-manual. Sends out the self-complete application form to the buyer (up to 6 minutes if a new customer or up to 1 minutes if the customer has JO1N account ready in place)

Online

If it is an online product that merchant signs up => the merchant gets “JO1N Merchant Account” and operates with it in one way: The merchant sets up the account and has access to her/his dashboard just to process and complete his duties once the product is sold. Easy and smooth.

Pre-scoring itself takes less than 3 seconds.

Decisions from lenders are available in less than 6 seconds and can take up to 60 seconds.

So, JO1N is a catch, right?

 As millions of individuals have been affected financially as a result of unprecedented times, we focus on affordability and transparency for our buyers and are positioned to eliminate frictions at the checkout for both customers and merchants. Promoting responsible lending values, we want to ensure that customers can afford to repay deferred purchases and enter into either interest-free or interest-bearing agreements.

If you are the merchant

 We’d love for you to get to know our company early before we start conquering the market, as there could one day be a good fit for us to discuss potential cooperation. JO1N us on our journey and sign up to the mailing list to learn about our progress. Currently, we’re in the progress of integrating the top lenders into our platform and plan to open the doors to buyers and sellers in the next following months.

JO1N us and be part of the UK lending market innovation! 🚀