jess-zhang

curious how's this different from pingdom, datadog etc?

thank you! good callout there -- we've some flexibility w pricing (pay as u go vs more fixed costs) - some of our customers pay fixed AYCE like pricing, while others more variable based.

also, most existing solutions like canopy, peach are good for 'vanilla' use cases, but we keep getting demand from folks who wanna to do more flavors to be competitive & offer better user experiences (think chocolate, strawberry with cherries & sprinkles)

thank you for the support!!

thank you!! interesting to hear similar pain points from all diff parts of the world!

glad u asked for more context! for example, a fertility service provider can use Pier to launch "pay later" & financing for its patients. fertility treatments like IVF, egg freezing are typically $10-25k, not covered by insurance. another example, tiktok can provide working capital to its influencers based on predicted video quality, # of viewers, frequency of postings etc

neat idea! curious how you're planning to apply credit to this use case u mentioned here?

indeed, funny u say that! some of our customers are in fact replacing affirm ;)

ahhaha thx! for now we're more focused on end-to-end credit stack for the US (it's already a lot to keep us busy for a while!) would def be very open to international expansions down the line! saw some comments around similar pain points in UK, europe, etc

yup, it's pretty configurable & flexible to the customer's KPIs. i've got a more detailed explanation above about how we do underwriting & risk.

thx for the feedback!! we'll keep that in mind

we're not as familiar with that part & UK operations. what do u mean by "multi-entity" requirement?

yup totally! we can do most of the heavy lifting there to get you the licenses. we automate a lot of this w templates & also given our prior experiences getting these licenses and building relationships w regulators, so we know how to be fast/efficient here.

for in-state offices, there are 3rd party agencies to work with to set those up. also recently, some states like NV have passed laws to remove this bottleneck.

hahah thank you! funny enough alex & I both have worked for JPM before

We don't do collection. Our customers own the loan receivables and they have the option to decide how they want to handle collections. there's a lot of flexibility and options here, depending on their business model and incentives.

yup we can support both use cases!

Sivo provides the debt, using their underwriting structure.

We don't provide debt. we provide an end-to-end credit infra that covers origination, compliance, loan management, credit reporting, etc.

one other call out is that we allow our customers' users to always stay on their platform, without being redirected to a 3rd party, so they own the full UX and user experiences.

our api docs - https://pier-dev.readme.io

underwriting and offer terms can be configured to each use case, depending on a few key factors: 1) applicant data - kyc, bank balance, credit score etc (pretty generic stuff here) 2) our customer's proprietary data - unique platform driven insights (e.g. revenue bookings, customer loyalty, typical order size, etc.) - this is more the secret sauce that allows our customers to offer better underwriting than traditional banks/lenders ;) 3) our customer's platform incentives - customers can align credit offering with their growth/strategy - e.g. if they wanna promote HVAC for Q3, all orders with HVAC can get more competitive rates, which would help them increase GMV & conversion 4) last but not least - compliance - ie state & fed regs (max APR, fees, etc)

thanks for sharing! yup you're right the balance sheet part. we currently don't offer debt capital/take on the balance sheet. we learned firsthand from our last company that if u start by offering balance sheet, you'd attract the wrong kind of players/customers to partner with.

fyi most of our customers have their own balance sheet or debt facility and it's not an issue for them. they prefer this flexibility too bcus every business model is a bit different, so there's not rly an one-size-fits-all like debt setup.

and to ur 2nd question - yes, we integrate closely with debt providers & SPV setups and are the 'neutral' source of ledger here too. depending on the set up, we can pull funds from lender or debt facility accounts, and put receivables with SPVs, syndicates or whatever the designated entity is

we've a pretty robust compliance team to verify and make sure that our APIs reflect the latest regulatory requirements and state/fed thresholds. we also always go back to the source, ie read all the applicable state & federal laws to cross check everything. i can talk all day about Michigan's Act of Credit 1942 lol

bcus of this, our customers lean on us heavily for compliance - we replace at least 0.5-1 compliance headcount for them, plus all the legal dollars...

1) see response above

2) a lot of existing solutions such as loanpro are good at supporting "vanilla" credit products, but tend to struggle with "chocolate & sprinkles on top" like configurations. we've talked to so many companies who told us that after they purchased these existing solutions, but had to spend another 3-6mths+ of engineer resources to configure it to their use case, and even that is still quite brittle with more manual involvements.

these configurations impact the entire loan cycle from origination, APR calcs, state rules and many more. for example, repayment cycles pegged to salary schedules, irregular 1st payment date, balloon payments, min payment for lines of credit, etc.

we support both consumer and business! some business use cases include working capital for SMBs, merchant advance, BNPL, trade credit, etc.

Licensing is one of our modules. like other modules, our customers have a choice (think picking from a salad bar) of what they want based on their use case. for licensing, you can BYO, leverage Pier's licenses, or we can help you apply for licenses too.

Operating as a licensed lender would allow you to have higher APR thresholds. For example in IL, unlicensed caps at 9% (which is not always economical), while licensed allows you to lend at 36%

we handle anything from $0 to $50k+. our API bakes in all the nitty gritty of diff APRs, amounts, fees, interest calc methods based on state & fed regulations. For example, KS has cumulative APR calc method with 36% for <=$860, 21% for >$860, while TX is 30% for <$500, 25% for $500-1000, 18% for over $1k.

yup! we can support both consumer & business borrowers. "pay-later" solution is a quite popular application of our product!

one callout here - it sounds like you're looking for someone to take on the balance sheet/collection risk, which is not something we do. we're saas only. our customers keep upside from offering credit (additional revenue, interest income, higher LTV, greater GMV etc) and also the balance sheet