Why fintechs—and you may Snoop Dogg—can be found in the new $160 million payment lending markets
When established card networks such as Visa, American Express and Mastercard start investing in fintech lending platforms such as Divido and ChargeAfter – as well as in the fintech lenders themselves such as Klarna and Vyze – it’s a clear signal that the future of unsecured personal loans may not be delivered by banks.
In justifying its 2019 purchase of Vyze, Mastercard cited an Accenture group study that claimed that the U.S. installment lending market represents a $1.8 trillion opportunity. It may also be one of the reasons U.S. rapper Snoop Dogg decided to invest in more than just his singing career by purchasing a stake in Klarna a year ago.
Today, installment loans cover a variety of uses ranging from purchasing t-shirts and jeans to debt consolidation and alternatives to credit cards. According to TransUnion, the market for unsecured installment loans of all types in the U.S. topped $161 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019.