Gamification of finance: Fintech Alfi eyes government agreements

Contxto – Fintech Alfi is a self-financed operation looking to innovate in more ways than one. Firstly, it is gamifying finance education to make it appeal to anyone and everyone. Secondly, it is mobilizing with the tools provided by international agreements like the Pacific Alliance to leverage its growth regionally from the gitgo.

This proactiveness has recently caught the attention of one of the governments that make up the Pacific Alliance. Which is why, Alfi—in correspondence with Contxto—has revealed that it is finalizing an agreement with the Mexican government.

Alfi’s Pacific Alliance

“Not just an alliance but an official partnership with the Secretariat of Finance (CONSAR) and the Secretariat of Education,” underlined Alfi’s leadership.

I say all the leadership, because, not only was the correspondence to all four head honchos, but interestingly each one of them represents each one of the Pacific Alliance’s members.

Furthermore, these co-Founders have spread out the fintech’s operations across the Alliance, successfully positioning themselves in the region in the midst of the pandemic. Just take a look at this spread:

This month, in Chile, Alfi signed an alliance with the Federación de Cooperativas de Ahorro y Crédito to reactivate the economy of this South American country. Alfi expects to impact half a million people in the first year and up to 4 millions in the world of microfinance.

In Peru, Alfi expects to impact 75 thousand people in rural areas dedicated to the cocoa and palm industry through Financial Inclusion.

And, Alfi also hopes to seal new cooperation agreements and alliances with important actors in Colombia as well as other Latin American countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador.

“We consider ourselves to be a startup of the Pacific Alliance, recognizing the support and trust received especially in Chile and Mexico. For this reason, our HQ is located in Mexico City.”

Alfi’s partnership in Mexico

After being selected as the best Inclusion initiative in the Americas by Young Americas Business Trust (Organization of American States), Alfi approached the Mexican government to improve the voluntary savings market and promote financial education at all levels.

Thanks to two agreements that they said they would be disclosing fully soon, Alfi will be catering to up to 70 million Mexicans with the goal of improving their well-being.

This got me wondering, with all these countries to choose from, why was the government of Mexico approached for this initiative over the rest of the Alliance?

The fintech responded that it was due to the networks they built at Finnovista’s StartupBootCamp FinTech in Mexico City. They quickly connected to this specific ecosystem and developed relationships over the past year with financial leaders and public agencies.

Furthermore, Alfi has seen that Mexico has shown a deep interest in developing financial education, from schools to the markets themselves, among which the official government proposal on the pension system stood out to them.

For now, much of what the government partnership with Alfi is still top secret, but we have agreed for Contxto to be their official digital partner for the fintech’s breaking news. However, this is what we can glean in the future from the company’s previous work.

Finance gamification 

Gamification has been such an underutilized resource until recently. Therefore, I was delighted that my pet peeve/euphemism—financial education—was actually being addressed (and monetized) by Alfi.

“We discovered that financial intermediaries in the market considered financial education to be an expensive element in their strategies.”

However, for fintech, the gamification game changed with the addition of elements of behavioral economics. This allowed Alfi to build content with each client (banks for example) for each type of user.

Therefore, Alfi’s platform is built to accompany users throughout their financial life-cycle with content tailored to them for them to make better financial decisions as they learn and evolve. Subsequently, the fintech works to make a match with the offer of cured user products from other intermediaries.

“For example, in Mexico we have started negotiations with a microfinance fintech and we will validate if our gamification model results in better credit performance.”

And there you have it, Alfi’s business model. One based on successful conversions and acquisition of financial products/services garnered by users on a constant learning journey.

Related articles: Tech and startups from Chile!

-AG