PayJoy: Finance for the Next Billion

By Jose Ignacio Garcia Suarez, Lucy Montgomery, Stephen Ciesinski
2025 | Case No. E873 | Length 15 pgs.
Entrepreneurship

PayJoy cofounders Doug Ricket and Gib Lopez, both members of the Stanford GSB MBA class of 2014, launched PayJoy in 2014 to provide access to credit to those living in emerging markets. In the early days of the company’s history, PayJoy financed a customer’s smartphone purchase, using the phone itself as collateral. The company’s business model had evolved significantly, but Ricket and Lopez were facing a major strategic decision as they pondered the company’s future.

They needed to choose between a Software as a Service (SaaS) licensing model, which involved licensing PayJoy’s proprietary technology and application software to local lenders and retailers around the world. The second option was a fintech model, where PayJoy would provide credit directly to customers, managing both the financing and repayment risk in-house, but still using retailers as partner-distributers. Which one would they choose?

Learning Objective

The learning objectives of this case are:

  • Understand the challenges of building and scaling a business for emerging markets
  • Debate the pros and cons of a potential business model pivot
  • Make recommendations on the path to building a sustainable business model
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