Mocasa offers interest-free credit to consumers

MANILA  -Mocasa, a new financial technology player, is targeting to build a client base of 300,000 this year by offering interest-free credit lines which they can tap to pay for their bills, groceries and other expenses.

Julien Chen, chief operating officer of Mocasa, said on Wednesday they would provide an initial credit line of P3,000 to P10,000 to their customers depending on their creditworthiness, which is determined with the aid of artificial intelligence. The credit limit, in the long run, can be adjusted depending on the payment behavior of the clients.

“As customers continuously spend the credit and repay on schedule, we may increase. Or if the repayment is late, we can also decrease,” he told the Inquirer.

Repayment period

After 30 days from loan approval and disbursement, the users will be given a notice that they have 20 days to settle the debt. In short, borrowers have 50 days to repay the loan.

Beyond that, the customers will be charged with interest already, which Chen said ranged from 3 percent to 12 percent.

Chen explained that the company can provide zero-interest loans because its main source of revenue comes from partner merchants who use their payment platform. He noted these merchants benefit from their service because they gather “user traffic in the app and its a large purchasing power from the users.”

“Whenever there is a merchant who wants to do promotion, to reach out to the users, we will enable the merchants to expose their materials to our users and connect the parties together,” he added.

In its app, customers can also pay for services provided by the following sectors: telecommunication, health care, real estate, transportation and government agencies, among others. Users can also buy mobile load via the app.

In the past year, Mocasa has been working on building its platform. It has so far onboarded over 100,000 users.

The fintech player plans to introduce rewards and cash back programs this year to increase user retention. INQ