APACE

For businesses that deal with the hassle of offering sales to their customers on credit or want to launch their BNPL program, we provide a platform that lists their product, verifies the creditworthiness of the potential customer, and collects the payments on their behalf. 

This segment broadly faces the problem of;

1.High default rate from credit customers 2.Limited & unsuitable options for credit life-cycle management solutions

Business owners and retailers lose sales because they lack access to credit life cycle (CLC) management solutions that allow them to offer credit to their customers securely and at scale. They lack the credit expertise and technologies required to manage the CLC, leading to high customer drop-offs (up to 40% in Nigeria) and credit defaults. Apace bridges this gap by providing an easy-to-use, fully automated BNPL platform that allows them to operate their CLC efficiently

Research has established that economic factors alone aren’t good predictors of lending behaviour and as such must be combined with psychological and socioeconomic factors in building accurate credit stores. Leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, we have built a proprietary solution that significantly improves the process of credit underwriting and loan default prediction. We incorporate 4 primary data points in making a credit decision, most other companies use one or two; economic data (bank statements) and credit bureau reports which do not tell the full story.

Apace as a solution serves mostly small businesses and merchants with negligible income as an economic tool to create sales conversion. We realized that more than 40% of prospective sales is being lost whenever a small business turns down an opportunity to sell on credit. Since they are losing almost half of sales that could better their economic lot their situations hardly improve. 

Our mission is to support the growth of 500,000 businesses in Africa by creating tools that allow them to drive more conversions. When the businesses create more turnovers then there will be growth and many of these businesses can evolve away from sustenance to scaling.

We have all been entrepreneurs at some point in our lives and understand the nuances of starting a business. In 2013 Simi started a company & has attempted several others between then and now. Olubodun has cofounded more than 1 company, and Paul has been an entrepreneur in his finance practice for most of his professional career. Our experiences in financial services, commerce, and technology provide a fine combination and increase our chances of success. We have interacted reasonably long enough we have built a relationship that is built on trust, mutual respect, and friendship

160 Business Merchants added 
Over 300 Shoppers in 2022

The primary aim of applying to Solve is to get growth leverage in the areas of new markets in Africa, finance, technology and hiring.

Apace is simply using Machine Learning to solve the Consumer Credit Behaviour problem in Nigeria and Africa

We encourage a diverse place of work as we continue to advance policies and ideas that engender inclusion of women, and other groups. 

One of the Directors in Apace is a woman and lawyer whilst one of the Senior Management Teams is led by another woman

The Business model is serving businesses while the businesses create opportunities for customers. Therefore we are B2B2C providing technology infrastructure to the merchants.

We have pegged our transactions commissions at 2.5% on transactions capped at 5,000

Sales Links: Merchants generate link, send to customers, and complete BNPL sales. 

Sales Store: Dedicated online store for merchants, products still mapped to Sales Links 

BNPL Bespoke: White-labeled BNPL customized to merchants sales platform 

We have raised 123,500 USD over a year ago with a mix of VC, Angel and Family & Friends.

Berrwood Capital.     20,000 USD 

Angels                       50,000 USD

F&F                           53,500 USD