Contxto – Mexican fintech, albo, is all in. Though the startup is best known for its banking app for individuals, it’s been quietly rolling out a new service to help businesses too: albo empresas (“businesses,” for those of you whose Spanish is on the rusty side).
The startup launched it in January of this year, and it’s steadily gained traction among some of the fintech’s previous users. To learn more about this product, Contxto talked to Alejandra Lascurain, Project Manager at albo.
- Related article: Mexico’s challenger and neo-banks. Do you know the difference?
Shhh, do you hear that? It’s feedback
Smart startups are fine-tuned to listen to user feedback. And as Lascurain went on to explain, this is the case with albo and its latest product.
“[The idea] emerged from our albo users,” explained the Project Manager during our call. “They started to ask if there was albo, but for businesses.”
The startup had stumbled upon a market opportunity that people were calling for. Plus, the fintech had a big advantage: It was an established brand among individuals.
“We already offered a product that had users’ trust, [and] that was known for being simple and transparent.”
Clearly it had the core concept for its new solution—it just needed to identify a specific problem to address. Soon enough the albo team did just that:
“We realized that companies nowadays lost a lot of time making payments.”
And if a company is wasting time… then it’s wasting money
As anyone in HR or management can attest, for every employee with a salary or vendor with an invoice, there’s a platform that must be accessed to complete a payment.
For albo, that meant that rather than using its tech to help individual users handle their finances, its new platform would help businesses manage their income and payments.
[wd_hustle id=”InArticleOptin” type=”embedded”/]
albo for teams
The fintech ultimately came up with a platform through which a company can receive money as well as disperse funds. Likewise, transfers are available 24/7 and managers can generate reports to see how the business’ financial health looks. All online of course.
Staff can even receive albo cards to complete payments for company-related expenses. To sweeten the deal, the fintech creates benefits programs for the businesses that take up its services.
Interestingly, albo told Contxto that there is no “one-size-fits-all” package. Since different companies have different needs, it re-adapts its rewards programs according to the company’s profile.
Despite these perks and launch, the product development journey is never really over.
“We’re still testing it out, seeing which pain points we’re relieving, and improving it,” noted Lascurain. Covid-19 even led to more changes. “With the current quarantine situation, we saw an increase of 150 percent in growth.”
As a result, it was all hands on deck at the fintech to make it easier for any business to access the service. Their efforts resulted in accounts being approved within 72 hours.
At the moment, there are 200 businesses using albo empresas. However, considering the growth fintech apps are experiencing as more companies migrate to digital platforms, who’s to say it will stop there?
Related articles: Tech and startups from Mexico!
-ML
