LendingPoint Debuts Point of Sale Lending Platform for Merchants

LendingPoint announced today the launch of LendingPoint Merchant Solutions, a platform that allows merchants to offer loans to their customers for purchases ranging from furniture to medical procedures.  

“When merchants offer consumer financing at the point of sale, they can remove friction and increase conversion,” said Mark Lorimer, Chief Marketing Officer of LendingPoint. “Our ability to offer shared risk plans, payment servicing plans as well as the full suite of promotional loan products, allows us to service all of a merchant’s customers from 850 all the way down to 500 FICO scores.”

Banks have long provided customers with loans for large priced items, but Lorimer told deBanked that it is very uncommon for non-banks to provide this service, particularly those that carry loans on their own balance sheet.

“The thing that’s different about our program is that in almost every single instance, when you apply for a loan at the point of sale, the first thing that happens is your credit is pulled,” Lorimer said. “This knocks down your credit for a while [and] if you’re in the near prime [FICO score range], 600, 680, you’re usually not going to be approved by a bank.”

Instead of pulling a customer’s credit score, LendingPoint Merchant Solutions does a soft credit pull, which has no impact on a customer’s credit, according to Lorimer.

“Depending on [what] the merchant is interested in, we can get close to 100 percent approval because we can take the loans between 600 and 850 ourselves,” Lorimer said.

LendingPoint offers point of sale loans that range from $500 to $15,000 with terms from 12 to 60 months. And the company responds to customers in a matter of seconds with an approval decision. Merchants get paid in full by LendingPoint Merchant Solutions at the point of sale and the customer does not always pay interest on the loan, as long as they pay within a promotional period set out by the merchant.

In December of last year, LendingPoint acquired LoanHero, which specialized in merchant onboarding, program management and reporting technology. LendingPoint Merchant Solutions combines LoanHero’s know-how with LendingPoint’s credit underwriting, risk management, and customer service expertise. The LoanHero brand has been retired and will now operate as LendingPoint Merchant Solutions.

LendingPoint was founded in 2014 and has issued nearly $500 million in consumer loans to more than 70,000 borrowers.

Todd Stone was a reporter for deBanked.