Divido and conquer

Divido’s co-founder and chief executive, Christer Holloman, has stated that the company’s long-term goal is to be the world’s largest white label platform for retail finance software.

One might be forgiven for thinking that 12 months into a global pandemic that ambition may now be a little ambitious, even for one of the world’s brightest fintech entrepreneurs.

But think again: “In times of economic uncertainty, consumers are always looking for ways to spread or defer costs, especially when they are making a big ticket purchase”, said Christer.

“During the pandemic the banks have seen a shift of spend from credit cards to ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL), so now the banks and the retailers are more interested than ever to provide this kind of facility to consumers because consumers are screaming out for it, they want more of it.”

This innovation in the retail finance space is why Divido has won a 2021 Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the Innovation category. Divido’s technology connects lenders and retailers through innovative technology that enables them to provide zero per cent and low-cost finance to consumers at the point of sale, with the option to spread the payments.

Christer founded Divido with Anders Hallsten in 2014 and a year later they received an Innovate UK Grant to develop their point of purchase platform. They haven’t looked back and as they have grown so has the company’s reputation – seeing the fintech trailblazer picking up a slew of awards.

In addition to a Queen’s Award, in the last year alone, the company has bagged many other awards, including recognition by Deloitte as one of the UK’s fastest growing tech firms and a landmark arrival into the Financial Times’ prestigious FT 1000 fastest growing companies in Europe list.

These accolades have helped to grow the firm’s profile in line with the desirability of its years of experience and expertise, and its smart and flexible technology platform. Today, more than a thousand customers and partners work with Divido including BNP Paribas, Lenovo, Lastminute.com and Nordea.

Christer said: “The demand for flexible payment terms or interest free finance has universal appeal and customer demand.

“We started in Europe, so initially that’s where we had most traction, and also in the Nordics where we have worked with some really big brands. At the end of last year, we also went live in South America and that’s now one of our fastest growing regions.

“Last year was a very good year for us, in terms of increase in demand, and the short-term goal is converting that demand and delivering on those new big clients we have signed up – scaling with them as they scale their ambitions with us.

“In the midterm we aim to continue with our internationalisation. Our platform is agnostic to

languages and currencies and today we are trading in 10 countries but we want to support even more countries so we are having conversations with partners outside our current key markets.”

But how does the company stay ahead of the curve and continue to innovate in a very competitive and rapidly-evolving sector? Christer said: “We are a team of 50 that eats, sleeps and thinks about nothing but retail finance all day, every day.

“So, we have a lot of ideas that we are feeding into our innovation roadmap and we validate those ideas with clients: that’s how we evolve our proposition.

“We also stay close to the customers and always understand what they are missing or lacking in what we are offering and what they would like to see. We license our platform to retailers and to banks and they obviously have a lot of ideas themselves on how the product is going.”

The world is ready for retail finance and Divido is already well on its way to conquering the market, transforming the payment method into a strong and desirable alternative for the evolved global consumer.

For more information visit https://www.divido.com/