BNPL Service Nelo Launches All-In-One App

Mexico City-based buy now, pay later (BNPL) service Nelo announced Wednesday (April 20) it had launched an all-in-one app.

“Nelo’s customers can now use Nelo at any online merchant, through a partnership with Mastercard,” the company said in a news release. “Nelo’s app is the first of its kind in the region, where customers can shop and pay in installments at their favorite stores like Mercado Libre, Amazon, and Liverpool.”

Nelo adds that the service is live now for all its customers, enabled through a virtual card that users generate at checkout.

See also: Buy Now, Pay Later Becoming a Pathway to Mainstream Banking in Mexico

“A top request from our customers has been more stores, and with this launch, we give them access to any online merchant within the Mastercard network, said Nelo CEO Kyle Miller.

Nelo says this launch builds upon its existing app, which provides financing for top stores like Telcel and Steve Madden.

Meanwhile, Nelo also announced it had added Alice (Xingwei) Lu to its leadership team as vice president of data science

“Alice joins us from Uber, where she led the Driver Pricing, Surge, and Incentives data teams. Before Uber, she received her Ph.D. in Operations Management from The Wharton School,” Miller said. “Alice’s rare combination of data science expertise and leadership experience will be the foundation of a world-class data team.”

BNPL is becoming a gateway for Mexico’s unbanked and underbanked citizens to access the world of financial services, as PYMNTS noted last year in a conversation with Adal Flores, CEO of BNPL provider Kueski.

Flores said the reality is that most people in Mexico — along with most of Kueski’s customers — are unbanked. Cash still accounts for upwards of 90% of transactions and most consumers don’t own a credit card.

“The potential we have is we’re not only solving the credit aspect; we’re also solving the payment aspect as well,” Flores told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.