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Cashea is now processing more than one BNPL credit per second in Venezuela, and already facilitates over 3% of the country’s GDP. They launched in 2022.
Imagine a country where credit simply ceased to exist, where millions were left out of the financial system. Now imagine a company that stepped into that void to not just restart, but revolutionize, consumer credit.
In our latest episode, I sit down with Pedro Vallenilla, CEO & Co-founder of one of the world’s most revolutionary (and fastest growing) fintechs.
In less than four years, Cashea has soared to become Venezuela's largest fintech and one of its most significant financial institutions, redefining access to credit for an entire nation.
In this episode, Pedro unpacks Cashea’s fascinating trajectory, sharing lessons from building a financial giant on what he calls a "blank canvas" of a market.
Below I’m including four of the most impactful and actionable insights from our conversation. If you're eager for more, the full discussion awaits:
1. From Crickets to Exponential Growth: The Go-to-Market Revelation
Cashea's 2022 launch was met with absolute silence. For two weeks, there were no downloads and no transactions whatsoever. The founders believed offering interest-free Buy Now, Pay Later in a country with no credit would be an instant success. But their value proposition wasn't understood because they tried to bring clients from online to offline, when customers were already conducting their transactions offline.
That said, ironically, this lack of traction was one of the biggest building blocks for rebuilding trust. Cashea pivoted, realizing they needed to meet customers where they are. At the point of sale.
They deployed ambassadors in stores to help merchants and customers get acquainted with Cashea, a strategy that has been working ever since and now involves a large operation with almost 200 people across 25 cities. This shift led to explosive growth:
• Month 1: $10,000 in transactions
• Month 2: $25,000. in transactions
• Month 3: $450,000. in transactions
2. The Venezuelan Paradox: Trust, Data, and World-Class NPLs
Initially, most claimed Venezuela was a low-trust society and that most Venezuelans wouldn't pay back their loans.
However, Pedro, drawing on his prior experience in the world of collections, shared that Venezuelans are one of the best payers and the most responsible borrowers in Latin America.
In his own words "when trust is created, trust is given back".
Cashea built its model on a blank canvas as credit was virtually non-existent in the country. Their strategy to reduce fraud and build credit history from scratch focused on:
• Creating an amazing closed-loop network (now with 5,000 merchants, almost 16,000 locations in 26 cities) that Venezuelans would consider a valuable asset.
• Minimizing the risk of default on the first payment.
The result is a credit model with Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) below 2%, losing less than $1 for every $100 in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) due to non-performing loans. While initial NPLs were higher (6-7%) when the network was smaller, they have drastically decreased as Cashea generates more value for its users.
For reference, it’s been reported that Affirm’s delinquency rate was 2.4% in 2024 and Block’s Afterpay delinquent BNPL loans reached 4% in 2023.
3. The Unconventional Financing Hack: Merchants as Allies
The macro and micro landscape for Venezuela has been disastrous for a very long time. So in order to get started, Cashea had to be highly creative with its credit structure.
Unlike many BNPL companies that require significant equity and debt to fund their loans, Cashea partnered directly with merchants:
• Merchants are the ones who initially grant the loan and provide the credit facility.
• Cashea, acting as a Fintech as a Service and a credit insurance product, buys back the loan if the customer defaults on any installment.
This structure fully aligns incentives between the merchant and Cashea, and has allowed the company to be very cash efficient and asset light, enabling rapid growth without needing to continuously raise large credit facilities like most fintechs out there.
For merchants, it's a clear win: they increase sales, retention, and conversions without assuming the risk, as Cashea bears it.
Initially, many merchants said no, but today there is a long line of merchanst knocking on Cashea’s door. Over 15,000 merchants are on a waitlist to be integrated.
4. Beyond BNPL: Becoming the Default Way to Pay for a Nation
Cashea aims to be more than a product for occasional large purchases (like cell phones or shoes).
Their vision is to become the default way Venezuelans buy and pay for things. To achieve this, they have diversified their product offerings:
• The typical BNPL with an initial down payment and three installments.
• Shorter installments, ideal for daily purchases like groceries and pharmacy items, integrating into users' monthly budgets.
• Installments up to six months for planned purchases.
The company aims to become their customer’s top of wallet choice for purchases. This approach is shifting the type of transactions, moving from eventual purchases to the most common and monthly purchases.
And if we take into account that 35% of adult Venezuelans have Cashea installed on their phones, I think they are well on their way to achieving this goal.
Cashea's story is also one of national resilience and reconstruction.
Pedro has built a 700-person company, with over 10 nationalities. Many of its team members are Venezuelan professionals who gained experience in unicorn companies and top-tier education worldwide and now are happy to apply their experience towards a company building in their home country.
With a vision to scale to over 6% of Venezuelan GDP before year-end, Cashea's goal is to become the most impactful and most beloved financial services company in the country.
You simply can't miss this story!
👉 Click below to watch the full conversation with Pedro on the Fintech Leaders podcast.
Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, Youtube or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.
Miguel.
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