Divido, the checkout finance platform, has reported 50% growth over the last year, and stated its aim to make 2023 the year checkout experience and payments become a long-term driver of growth for retailers and lenders.

With inflation set to weaken retailers’ profits this year, and consumers demanding more manageable forms of finance, Divido is set on a course of innovating checkout finance to improve the retail customer experience and offset retailers’ losses caused by the current economic headwinds.

Divido CEO Todd Latham comments: “Businesses are under a lot of pressure to reduce costs and reach more customers and help them to buy the necessary items. 2022 showed there is still a gap between what retailers are offering and what consumers need.

“As consumer behaviour changes, and inflation continues to take its toll, lenders and merchants must meet these evolving customer needs and deliver transparency, value, and flexibility at the point of sale. Through strategic partnerships, retailers and lenders can offer consumers responsible checkout finance options. In what will continue to be a difficult time for many, this level of choice can help brands earn trust and loyalty by creating frictionless finance for the consumer moments that matter.”

Commercial partnerships

2022 saw Divido sign a new deal with M&S Bank to enable Sparks Pay, a new retail finance programme for Marks & Spencer shoppers. 2023 is set to be an even bigger year for the checkout finance platform as it continues to curate an ecosystem of trusted lenders and merchants that enables finance at any checkout.

In 2023 Divido will implement its checkout finance platform on behalf of multi-million-pound merchant The London Mint Office.

Divido will also be integrated into the CellPoint Digital orchestration platform, allowing CellPoint clients to implement their own retail finance programmes through the CellPoint stack. Further, a partnership with Nuvei will open the door for Divido to scale within the Nuvei client base, while allowing those clients to access Divido as a solution.

Divido also struck up a partnership with Novuna Consumer Finance in 2022, which led to up to 76% conversion rates through the Divido platform. Building on this success, a further partnership with a European retail bank planned for early 2023 will see Divido offering its retail finance programme in new territories across Europe. This will allow Divido customers to access finance across the EU.

Elsewhere, Divido has strengthened its partnerships with existing clients, such as ING, HSBC and Nordea.

Executive team bolstered with new talent

Talent was an important focus for Divido throughout 2022, to ensure strong growth in a challenging climate. Last year saw a series of strategic appointments, including:

• Todd Latham, Chief Executive Officer – Formerly of Amex and Currencycloud, Todd was appointed CEO at the start of the year. He is responsible for Divido’s strategic vision and positioning in the market.  
• Helen Aboagye, Chief Marketing Officer – Previously of Imagen and Currencycloud, Helen joined the team in September and has since been working to strengthen the Divido brand.
• Gareth “Gaz” Lloyd-Owen, Chief Product Officer – Joining from Roostify in November, Gaz is developing the company’s long-term product vision and driving excitement around the product portfolio for both employees and customers. 
• Edoardo “Edo” Volta, Chief Revenue Officer – With over 20 years’ experience in the payments sector and previous senior positions at Visa, Amex and Mastercard, Edo looks forward to steering customer relationships.
• Ashley Humphrey, VP of Finance – Previously CFO of United Fitness Brands and Insig AI, Ashley has two decades’ experience in financial management. She will steer Divido’s strategic growth through 2023 and beyond.

Retail finance platform evolves

Divido invested in its platform through 2022, realising its vision to offer a market-leading retail finance platform that offers an intuitive user experience to lenders, merchants and end-users.

Going into 2023, the platform has now rolled out new functionality to enable:

• Increased transactions per second, allowing lenders and merchants to increase the efficiency of their retail finance programmes
• Enhanced client reporting tools, giving quick access to big data
• Client-editable template PDFs and accessible web contact generation to improve trust at the checkout
• A more seamless user experience, with faster address lookup, a loan application recovery feature and a client-embeddable calculator
• Improved security features including OTP, Synk for security scanning, Datadog, Site24x and Opsgenie.