retail-financing
(3)
Synchrony
Synchrony rarely gets top billing, yet it finances the couch, the crown, the car repair and the checkout behind many familiar brands. Its real product is a vast, carefully wired bridge between the moment people need something and the moment they can pay for it.
Suplias
Suplias is a Lagos-based B2B fintech that helps FMCG distributors and small retailers in Africa buy inventory on credit. Founded in 2019 and part of Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch, it started as a marketplace connecting mom-and-pop shops with manufacturers, then leaned into its Obtainly app, which lets retailers and distributors pay suppliers, build a credit history, and access short-term inventory and LPO financing with no collateral and repayment over roughly 30 days.
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.