British FinTech SteadyPay has closed a $3 million seed round
N1 fintech fund invested in SteadyPay, a British progressive lending platform with a Co-founder from Ukraine. European venture funds such as Ascension, The Future Fund, and others have already invested in this fintech.
"We have seen a progressive lending product for the new generation, backed by well-built AI technology. It's great that Ukrainians worldwide are involved in creating innovations. It makes one want to invest in such startups. The decision was unanimous within the team," says Nykyta Izmailov, CEO and Founder of N1.
Steadypay is a fintech startup founded by John Downie, from the UK and Ivan Istomin, from Ukraine.
SteadyPay Co-founder John Downie has spent most of his career developing technical solutions for banks and realised that existing lending solutions needed to meet the needs of workers with irregular incomes, such as freelancers. And the ‘gig economy’ is bringing more and more of them into the labour market.
"The demand for lending to people with irregular incomes is growing, so we've created a solution," says Downie.
Ivan Istomin is a Ukrainian co-founder of SteadyPay and an experienced payment and retail lending entrepreneur. In startups, he develops white-label embedded finance and lеnding-as-a-service: "We see the huge demand for integration of SteadyPay lending platform under own branding of neobanks and marketplaces for their customers asking for financing."
How does it work?
SteadyPay is a UK-based progressive lending platform for people with unstable incomes.
The AI-based solution analyses open user data to predict their creditworthiness. According to these forecasts, SteadyPay tops up the bank account of a trusted and reliable platform user if their earnings fall below the average monthly income. The algorithm calculates how much money can be loaned to a particular client. The average monthly replenishment per person is about £250, and the maximum balance a user can have on SteadyPay at any given time does not exceed £1000. The platform operates on a subscription model. The funders describe it as ‘Netflix for credit.’
Users are charged a monthly fee of £7 per week for the service. They can recharge without interest and only have to repay SteadyPay when they exceed their average income in a given month.
The platform currently has 12,000 active users, most of whom are between the ages of 22 and 40.