Kafene

Kafene is a New York-based fintech that gives retailers a point-of-sale lease-to-own option for shoppers who get turned away by traditional credit. Using a machine-learning model that weighs more than 20,000 data points, Kafene approves customers in seconds for purchases up to about $5,000 - furniture, appliances, electronics, tires - then lets them lease the item and either pay it off to own it or return it without penalty. It positions itself as a transparent, debt-free alternative to buy-now-pay-later for the roughly 100 million Americans with limited or no prime credit.