Neal Desai of Kafene on building a category leader in lease-to-own financing

While BNPL has gathered all the attention these past few years, there is another point-of-sale financing category that has been around for decades: lease-to-own, sometimes called rent-to-own. It has historically been full of unscrupulous actors charging excessive fees and it is not an area that has received much attention from fintech companies.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Neal Desai, the CEO and Founder of Kafene. After a thorough analysis of different opportunities he landed on lease-to-own as an area that could use some fintech innovation. He is doing things very differently to the legacy players in the field and is building a sizable business.

In this podcast you will learn:

• The detailed research that Neal did before founding Kafene.
• Why he decided to focus on lease-to-own financing as a category.
• How his time as a trader on Wall Street helps him run Kafene.
• How the Kafene offering works.
• The types of companies they partner with.
• Their average approval amount.
• How they underwrite these subprime consumers.
• Their unique approach to helping consumers who are experiencing difficulties.
• The regulatory structure they use with their lease-to-own agreements.
• Their approach to adding merchants into their ecosystem.
• How the rise of BNPL has impacted the growth of Kafene.
• The breakdown of early buyouts, returns and charge-offs.
• How Kafene is building trust in a space not known for good actors.
• How they make money.
• The big challenges today when it comes to growing their business.
• The scale they are at today.
• Neal's vision for the future of Kafene.

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