Yaacov Martin, CEO of Fintech firm Jifiti, a company focused on consumer financing and B2B lending experiences for lenders and merchants, recently shared his views and insights with Crowdfund Insider.
For context, embedded finance helps with the incorporation of a range of financial services directly into platforms customers are already using, and this Fintech trend is on the rise. In fact, the industry in Canada is expected to reach over US$17 billion by 2029, making financial services more accessible, convenient, and affordable for everyone.
Embedded finance can be beneficial to bridge the gap between financial institutions and the end customers. In the B2B space, merchants are increasingly selling their products and services online to businesses. As business buyers now expect the same smooth financing experience that they get as consumers, B2B embedded lending is gaining traction.
That’s why we recently connected with Yaacov Martin, CEO of the Jifiti Group, the global embedded lending company that is on a mission to provide access to responsible, affordable financing options at every customer touchpoint.
Jifiti enables banks and lenders to deploy their competitive loan programs at any merchant’s point of sale (POS). And this isn’t just for B2C transactions; it is shaking up the B2B industry too, where access to financing was manual, time-consuming, and bureaucratic.
Yaacov discussed how Jifiti recently partnered with Tabit, a B2B BNPL solution provider in Canada, to bring seamless lending to B2B merchants and their customers.
Our conversation with Yaacov Martin is shared below.
Crowdfund Insider: Tell us about Jifiti and what you are doing to change the B2B BNPL experience.
Yaacov Martin: Jifiti is a white-labeled embedded lending platform, enabling business buyers and consumers to access competitive loan programs from the world’s leading banks and lenders from within the merchant’s native customer journey. And with embedded lending programs offered by regulated lenders, demand from the B2B industry is high. The idea is to empower merchants to easily embed any B2B financing plan into every customer journey, using Jifiti’s cutting-edge technology. Merchants get paid at the time of the sale, while customers pay back the lender over time.
This way, merchants can give B2B customers exactly what they need: a seamless business financing experience online, in-store, via call center, and in any assisted customer flow, without taking on the financial risk themselves.
Business customers need to be provided with access to financing that sometimes differs from that of consumers. Often there are different specialist lenders or financial institutions behind the financing programs, including different application processes and customer touchpoints.
Crowdfund Insider: How do you choose which industry professionals you’ll work with?
Yaacov Martin: We strive to form partnerships with like-minded industry leaders to bring value to everyone involved—to the banks and lenders, merchants, small-to-medium businesses, and their customers. We must have shared values, and the partnerships should have the potential to be long-term, like a life-long partner.
Crowdfund Insider: How will your partnership with Tabit change the BNPL space?
Yaacov Martin: Embedded lending means seamlessly integrating financing and loan products within non-financial customer journeys.
While BNPL fintech providers are typically not equipped to deal with business loans or large transactions, banks and traditional lenders are. With embedded lending technology, banks are able to seamlessly embed their B2B loan programs within any merchant’s customer journey, meeting merchant and business buyer expectations for accessible, affordable, and responsible financing.
Jifiti already supports loan programs offered by tier-1 banks and lenders like Citizens Bank, CaixaBank, and Credit Agricole. Through our partnership with Tabit, a leading B2B BNPL solution provider, we are helping B2B merchants and suppliers in Canada easily offer responsible, flexible financing to their customers.
Using Jifiti’s white-labeled e-commerce platform plugins, Tabit can scale its lending to online B2B merchants in Canada. Online merchants can download the Tabit embedded lending plugin from any leading e-commerce platform marketplace, like Shopify and BigCommerce, and embed Tabit’s installment loans and net terms for business buyers at checkout. Offering customers these financing options and allowing them to spread out their costs to match cash flow means merchants can grow their sales and cart sizes. And another benefit of white-labeling is that it helps the merchant build customer loyalty.
Crowdfund Insider: Could you explain a little about embedded lending’s evolution in Canada?
Yaacov Martin: According to Tal Schwartz, author of the Canadian Fintech Newsletter, the “US has well over 50 BaaS providers while Canada basically has three,” meaning that challenger banks are either “owned by big banks or run by massive retailers.”
However, this is changing as more specialist providers and BaaS products enter the market, handling individual areas of the banking stack and promoting embedded finance solutions, with the banks retaining their core balance sheet and lending capabilities. This move also allows merchants and service providers to offer regulated financial products and services to their customers, in their own brands and user journeys.
More and more mid-sized banks and retail brands are certainly warming up to embedded finance possibilities.
Crowdfund Insider: What’s next for Jifiti?
Yaacov Martin: Jifiti is scaling its B2B offering to more sectors, like heavy equipment, OEM, and CPG, catering to even more use cases. Also, we are always working on optimizing our omnichannel approach, streamlining financing across every channel, online, in-store, via call center, and in any assisted sales flow, including ordering and invoice systems.