The spin-off of deferred payments provider Tinka marks a new phase in the digital and business transformation of former Wehkamp Finance.
Tinka makes customer purchases easy with deferred payment and payment in installments options for all retailers and e-tailers in the Netherlands. In addition, Tinka has fully digitized customer acceptance, updates to regulations and supervision, as well as the prevention and timely addressing of potential payment issues. Tinka aims to lead the change in responsible lending, combining consumer payment options with dedicated customer care and protection.
With the spin-off of Tinka, any retailer now has the option to add deferred payment or payment in installments to its range of payment options to their customers, next to direct checkout, payment by credit card or temporary payment deferral. If a new customer chooses Tinka, their purchase will be made after a series of automatic real-time checks (BKR, loan standard, acceptance guidelines, etc.). Using the Tinka app, the latest payment status is always accessible to the customer.
Tinka CEO, Karlheinz Toni: “As Tinka, we set ourselves an ambitious vision: to be the most loved and responsible deferred payments partner - in the Netherlands and beyond. We have 60 years of experience providing deferred payments, such as invoiced, buy-now-pay-later and point of sale consumer finance and in these 60 years we have learned a lot. Those learnings enable us to now lead the change in this structurally challenged and highly competitive market and to truly put consumers first. I have no doubt that following our vision relentlessly is the only way to build sustainable partnerships in a responsible manner, with consumers and merchants.”
‘Duty of care’ fully integrated Because Tinka enables payment in installments, the duty of care for the consumer has been an important starting point when setting up payment solutions. Tinka is one of the longest standing companies offering deferred payments and combines 60 years of experience with the latest innovation of fintech to implement all conditions for responsible and reliable agreements with consumers.
Karlheinz Toni: “We take the lead in duty of care across all our products: invoiced, buy-now-pay-later and consumer credit. That means going beyond just abiding by regulations and laws. It means proactively looking for how you can take the next responsible step - and then taking it: we invested heavily in technology to help us be more approachable for our consumers - and with success: over the last years we substantially reduced the number of arrears by 80%; on credit and on other buy-now-pay-later products. First steps demonstrating we are not just talking, we take action and will continue to do so.”
First to perform credit checks for payments under € 1,000 Exemplary for customer care, Tinka is the first provider to implement its own credit check and acceptance norms for deferred payments under EUR 1,000 - which is not legally required. Toni: “In our data-analysis, we identified that for our consumer-credit product, people with a maximum credit of EUR 1,000 are overrepresented in our continuously reducing arrears numbers. Knowing what we know, we can’t claim to lead the market in responsibility and not act. So we have started verifying loans of any size - as the first one in the market.”
Tinka available to millions of consumers By becoming an independent company, Tinka can fully exploit its growth potential with responsible consumer lending and deferred payment options with more, new merchants. Besides Wehkamp, the first clients like BCC, Sanitairwinkel, Buckaroo, Intersolve and recently CCV and CreditClick, have now started using Tinka as a payment option. Tinka expects to make further announcements of new partners over the coming months.