Last Mile Financial Services Limited, a fintech start-up, has launched a payment app called “”PAY MASTA”. The app allows company employees to access funds for emergencies before salaries are paid.
During the launch of the start-up, Co-Founder of the company, Gerald Erih disclosed that the solution was borne out of genuine response to employees’ payment challenges.
In his words, “We observed that in Nigeria, about 80 percent of workers live paycheck to paycheck. So we developed this solution to enable them not just to have access to the money they have earned, anytime they need it, but also to help them plan their finances and track their expenses so that they can live debt-free”
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The co-founder further disclosed that he noticed that so many loan apps are making things extremely difficult for people, instead of the other way round. He stressed that their high-interest rate is very awful, which makes it difficult for the borrower to pay back, which has seen so many of them default in payment.
With the launch of Last Mile Financial Services, the firm is on a mission to rescue working-class Nigerians and also extend to other Africans. Already, the Start-up has signed up about 20 Nigerian companies whose employees are currently enrolled on the Pay Masta app, to access interest-free payment of their salaries by their employers, while noting that 75 other Nigerian companies are being processed to be onboarded on the platform.
The company is already working on closing new funding, to enable it to expand its business across the shores of Africa to address payment challenges faced in the continent. With each passing day, more Fintech Start-up rises to fix financial challenges and problems people are often faced. with
This is a commendable initiative from last-mile financial services for helping to solve a long problem that employees in the country are often faced with. Like they say, “Life is full of uncertainty”, which implies that most times before employees are paid salaries, they are sometimes faced with emergency issues that arise before payday, which often puts them in a tight corner.
A large percentage of workers in Nigeria live paycheck to paycheck. Loan apps on the other hand are not helping matters, as they charge outrageous interest for loans, which makes it difficult for the borrower to pay back. Most loan apps in Nigeria perpetuate the notion of loan sharking, which is fraudulent and violates the ethics of loan transactions.
Many employees who are in dire need of money and are not well-informed, borrow money from these apps which later affects them in paying back. Most of them agree to the terms and conditions of these loan sharks, not aware of the difficult financial situation they might find themselves in. Well, last-mile “Pay Masta” has come to put a stop to fraudulent interest rates of these loan sharks by offering no interest rates for money borrowed.
