By Simone Vaccari, Chief Credit Officer, Bboxx
We all need to reboot. In the past years the whole PAYGo sector in growth markets has been based on a false premise.
The “hard sell” that pushes a product onto an ill-suited customer is not success – it gives a short term shot in the arm in terms of on the surface impact but is not a medium or a long-term play. At worst it is just failure delayed.
The off-grid solar sector has come a long way since the early days of PAYGo. Back then, our collective success was often measured by one metric alone: sales volume. How many households could we reach, how quickly could we distribute solar home systems, how fast could we grow? While this approach brought millions of people into energy access, it also exposed structural weaknesses: repayment struggles, portfolio stress, and declining investor confidence.
I experienced that first hand having joined the industry in 2015, where credit had a backseat to growing sales and expansion.
The industry has learned from those early years and is shifting the focus on more sustainable growth. The next chapter demands that we master not just the products we sell, but the financial product we extend.
At Bboxx, we have embraced this shift wholeheartedly and credit management has now become a core part of our approach. And the results since we made the shift in early 2024 speak for themselves.
From chasing sales to cultivating good customers
Strong customer onboarding, proactive engagement, and disciplined credit management directly translate into healthier portfolios and more satisfied customers.
This is a key part of our journey at Bboxx. Bboxx Pulse, our internally built platform that helps us manage both customer relationships and financing, has been built to give us actionable insights, giving us a strong ‘’pulse’’ on what had to change.
For example how to leverage on AI to determine and improve customer payment patterns (link) through our collaboration with University College London. These new tools allow for earlier interventions for customers who are struggling to pay for their system on time, increasing overall repayment rates by up to 10% and improving customer satisfaction.
Over the last year we improved our customer journey, tightening the KYC and underwriting process through the integration of Smile-ID (a third party software that reconciles the ID number with the government database and confirms the picture taken of the customer matches the one in the ID) and automated analysis and screening of Mobile Money statements. This resulted in a 40% YoY improvement of the quality of new customers at 10% into the loan period. Early repayment behavior is not just a number – it is a signal. If a cohort underperforms in the early days, we act swiftly with tailored customer support, restructuring options, or targeted engagement. Cohorts originated in 2024 have achieved a 10% improvement of the receivable collected at the contractual end date as compared to cohorts originated in past years and 2025 cohorts are on track to overperform this.
That means more families unlocking their potential, as we are able to build a credit track-record for our customers, understanding their affordability sweet-spot, which allows us to offer them other products and services that they need with a lower repayment risk, increasing the life-time value of our relationship – all through better credit management. To date we have over a quarter of a million customers that have completed their first contract and are eligible for a subsequent one.
Pioneering change
Updating the approach to PAYGo was not without challenges. It required cultural change, from redefining what success looks like (“good sales, not just sales”), to retraining teams, to resisting the pressure of chasing short-term growth at the expense of long-term sustainability. But the discipline has paid off. We are exploring partnerships that help us leverage best practice from the wider sector, and recently we launched a collaboration with CreditChek in Nigeria to leverage their AI-powered credit underwriting to assess customer creditworthiness in real-time. By doing this we are tapping into the capability of transforming complex, fragmented data into actionable credit management insights at a fraction of traditional costs.
A call to the industry
The message for the fintech industry and beyond (PAYGO, BNPL, Asset Financing, etc..) is simple: repayment is not an afterthought, it is part of the core business, and it must be hand in hand with growth, accepting the trade-offs it will entail. If we fail to ensure customers succeed, we fail as companies and as a sector. Updating the approach to PAYGo is not a silver bullet, nor is it a checklist – it is a new operating system. One that puts accountability, discipline, and customer care at the center of our work.
At Bboxx, we are proud to be among the leaders showing what is possible when PAYGo is done right. Our experience proves that this model is not just theory – it delivers tangible results for customers, investors, and long-term sustainability. It’s a journey of a thousand steps, and along the way we are refining how we serve customers, strengthening repayment systems, investing in data-driven insights, and cultivating a culture of responsibility. Each step forward reinforces the foundation of PAYGo: a model where growth and customer success move together. This journey is not about quick wins but about shaping an industry that can stand the test of time – resilient, inclusive, and sustainable.
Article first published on Sun-Connect, 15/10/2025: https://sun-connect.org/resetting-the-approach-to-paygo-for-the-long-term-sustainability-of-the-sector/
