Launch YC S21: Meet the Batch, Thread #5
Hey HN, we are Pierre, Jose Carlos and Antoine, co-founders of Palenca (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.palenca.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.palenca.com&#x2F;</a>). We make it easy for companies in LatAm to verify employment data and identity, enabling them to run background checks and provide financial services.<p>In emerging markets it’s extremely hard to validate income, identity and behavior as most of the worker&#x27;s data is fragmented and inaccessible. As a consequence, countries like Mexico encounter poor credit penetration (20%) and high levels of fraud (2x the global level). Moreover, 80% of the transactions in LatAm are in cash. As soon as workers are paid, they are withdrawing all the money out of the ATM to spend it in cash. This means the vast majority of financial and employee information can not be accessed through the bank accounts.<p>We were previously building a lending company and had a hard time validating earnings and behavior that we needed to underwrite credit. We tried to do it first with bank accounts, but the information we were getting was either incomplete or inexistent. To solve that we built integrations with other platforms. Later we realized that the infrastructure we built to get access to the data was way more valuable than the lending business we had before.<p>We integrate directly with payroll systems to provide access to any worker account via our API. We already cover 90% of the Gig Economy in LatAm (e.g: Uber, Rappi, Didi). We are currently expanding to other payroll systems (e.g: Starbucks, Walmart). We are providing 4 types of information: Personal Information (e.g. Full Name, Tax ID, Photo), Profile (e.g. Rating, Acceptance Rate, Lifetime Trips), Earnings and Events (e.g: Trips, Delivery)<p>Our product works the same way as open banking. The end-user provides his credentials and his consent. We get his data on his behalf, and we pass it on to the company that is providing the service (e.g: Lending, Insurance, Recruitment). Right now, our main use cases are lending (cars, motorcycle, unsecured loans), direct deposit switch (change the account in which the users receive their money) background checks (validating quickly the data of a Uber Driver for a new marketplace, checking that they&#x27;re not fraudulent, already experienced) and insurance (pay per km, check if the driver was taking a trip when an accident occurs).<p>You can check out the demo here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.palenca.com&#x2F;demo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.palenca.com&#x2F;demo</a>